Saturday With The Grandkids

 

     Normally I will pick up MJ and Matthew on a Saturday morning and Kay and I will spend time with them doing various things. Hopefully we are creating memories.

     When I arrived a few weeks back, Matthew was playing a game on the TV and wouldn't stop so MJ and I went off without him. Kay had something going with her Master Gardening group so it was just MJ and I. The first stop was the botanical Gardens where we walked around looking at plants and I watched her play in the kids area, sometimes we talked to each other. 

     After a while we took off looking for the remains of and old settlement, we wound up bypassing it and went to Greensboro instead. We wanted to have lunch there but MJ couldn't find a suitable eatery on her phone so we went to Madison in search of a Dairy Queen, she and her phone took me right to it. After lunch it was time to head for home.

     It was a fairly long drive from Madison to Jefferson. Along the way I tried to have a conversation with MJ and while she would answer my questions that was about it, mostly she was involved in her phone. The more I thought about it the more I was getting perturbed, MJ was a child of her times and I expected her to be interested in her old grandpa - what was I thinking.

     A couple of miles from home, I decided to say something so I pulled off the road.  As I put the truck in park I told MJ that I wanted to talk to her so she needed to put her phone down. I asked her if she had read any of my blog and she said dad had read a couple of stories to her. I asked if she knew why I wrote my blog, she said "so you will remember", I said no I remembered everything I wrote. I went on to say that one day I wanted to know something about my grandparents but there was nobody alive to tell me what I wanted to know. I told her that I wrote my memories down because I knew that some day she, her children and maybe even later generations would have questions that only I could answer and me writing down my memories would be the only way for them to get their answers.

     It was about this time that she started to cry, when I asked why she was crying she told me that some things just made her cry. I gave her a hug and told her that I loved her and told that I would like it if she would put her phone down and talk to me when we were out and about. MJ told me she didn't know what to ask about so I promised to work on that part. She asked if I would teach her how to fish and I said I would which takes me to the next part of this memory.

     Fast forward a couple of weeks. I called Danny to ask if the kids were doing anything that Saturday, he told me MJ had a school function but Matthew was available so I asked if Matthew would want to spend time with me. He called back and said Matthew said yes.

     So, Saturday morning I picked up Matthew and away we went, I had no idea what I was going to do to hold Matthew's interest. Then I remembered that I had two spinning rods in the truck so I asked Matthew if he wanted to go to the lake and fish, I told him I would teach him to cast a spinning rod. We got to the lake and I put lures on the rods and started showing him how to hold the rod and cast it then retrieve the lure. I taught him how to untangle the lure without getting stuck with a sharp hook. Matthew hasn't had a growth spurt recently and I noticed his small hands trying to grip the rod and just knew he would get frustrated but be surprised me, in no time he was doing a two hand cast and getting good distance.

     After a couple of failed cast that didn't go too far he was starting to get the hang of it but most importantly he didn't give up. It wasn't long that he was making some pretty decent cast, every time he did I made sure to compliment him and encourage him to try again. After a while we stopped for lunch at Dairy Queen, for whatever reason Matthew went into one of his moods but once the meal was done I asked if he wanted to go home or do some more fishing.

     We went to three different spots that afternoon. At the last place my back was starting to ache from all the standing so I found a place to sit and just watched Matthew making cast after cast. We were both disappointed that the fish didn't cooperate but I explained that some days were like that. Matthew was quiet on the drive home, when we got there he pushed past mom and dad and went upstairs. I told Danny what we did and asked him to tell Matthew how proud I was of him.

     Several days later, I talked to Danny. He told me how much Matthew had enjoyed our outing, it was all he talked about later that night. Danny said he told Matthew that he would dig out one of his rods and let Matthew show him what I had taught him then he would teach Matthew how to do it right. In no uncertain terms, Matthew informed Danny that "grandpa knew what he was doing".

      This was not the first time MJ and Matthew had gone fishing with me but they were younger then, maybe now is a better time. I hope they learn to enjoy fishing, I hope they remember who got them started.

     

     

Older By The Minute

 

     Sometime in my earlier years I figured out that the day you are born is the day you start die. This line of reasoning defines the phrase "getting older by the minute".

     Looking back, I never gave getting older much thought, I mean, after all you don't think much about getting old when you are starting first grade but if you really think about it you did a lot of thinking about being older. when you were maybe four you watched other kids head off to school every morning and you wanted to go also but mom said you weren't old enough so you thought - I can't wait till I'm old enough to go to school. There were also the times you wished you were old enough for a bike, walk to school by yourself, can't wait till I'm a teenager - the list of think you wished you were old enough to do at that age is endless. During the whole process you never once thought about the reality that you were in fact getting older by the minute. Those years between birth and adulthood were the greatest times of your life and you won't even realize it for a several decades.

     One of the drawbacks of being a kid is that old age relates to anybody you have to look up to, I mean really bend your head back and look up, when you are five being old is somewhere around fifteen, old age is over thirty and everything else is just antiquated. 

     I couldn't wait till I turned eighteen, at eighteen I would be an adult and could do anything I wanted to do but I quickly learned that I could do those things only as long as someone older had the same ideas. Turns out that "Uncle Sam" wanted me to join one of the Armed Forces, four years later the real world in general said I had to get a earning a living - no more free rides, it didn't sound fair but then nobody said life was fair.

     Turning thirty for most people was a major setback, personally I never understood that but some people went into a major midlife crisis mode becoming moody and crying a lot. Sure it was a milestone, one of life's many but for me it was just another birthday just like all of those that followed. I kept doing what I thought was expected of me, providing for my family, making the boss happy and all the while I was getting older by the minute but still getting older was not something I gave much thought about, when I did I just joked about it.

     I guess I finally started giving my age some thought somewhere in my fifties not that I was slowing down any but it was more that I was tired of having to deal with people younger than me who hadn't lived half the life I had but thought they knew everything, youth is wasted on the young. I made it to retirement age, it felt good not to have to get up and go to work. Linda and I were footloose and fancy free, no one to answer to except each other. Life was great, for a while, anyway.

     I retired in my sixties, older? yeah but I didn't really feel it, there was still that layer of old age above me that I had yet to reach. I qualified as a senior citizen and was moving into "old fogey" status, "older than dirt" is the ultimate goal. I had yet to admit I was old, I didn't feel old and was fairly active but it was only a matter of time as I was getting older by the minute.

     Reality finally reared it's ugly head a few short years later. Linda had been ill for sometime, I assumed the role of caregiver, where ever she needed to go, I took her, whatever she needed ,I got it for her, she could no longer do the simplest things. She could sit up on the edge of the bed and rest for a few minutes before standing, one night she slipped to the floor, when I tried to help her I found I didn't have the strength to help her because she couldn't help me. Luckily there was a young neighbor next door who came to our rescue. This incident was the turning point for me, at that time I felt really old, I could no longer care for the person I loved more than life itself.

     That was more than ten years ago, in many ways I have maintained my individuality but I'm afraid I'm about to cross the threshold into the "old fogey" status. The brain wants to maintain the status quo but the body declines to cooperate on a regular basis. Before I get down on one knee, I make sure there is something nearby to help me back up, the day to day aches and pains accompanied by moans and groans serve to let me know that I'm not only alive but also older than I was the day before. There's not much I can do about getting older, it sort of goes with the territory and while I'm happy to still be in an upright position I know there are many who never made it this far.

     So here I am about to turn 78 in a couple of months, I got arthritis in most of my joints, my left knee is on it's way out. I now see at least six doctors annually and I good nights sleep consist of five or six hour and not consecutively but I wake up each day and find something to do, even if it hurts.

     While I don't dwell on how much longer I will be around, the thought does cross my mind. There is so much more I want to do and see, most importantly, wanting see my grandchildren turn into young adults is high on the list but somewhere there is another list with my name on it and a date, in the mean time I'm getting older by the minute.

Fishermen Make Good Friends

 

     Last week, I was talking to my brother Clint, we must have been talking about fishing because he told me a fishing story about dad that I never knew. 

     Let me preface the story by saying that dad was an old school fisherman extraordinaire. My earliest memories was of him driving away with half a dozen cane poles sticking out the back window of the car, somewhere in the back seat was a can of earthworms he had dug up the night before. His tacklebox was a small metal box filled with bobbers (plastic and cork) some hooks and lead weights although old spark plugs or rusty nuts worked in a pinch. He fished rivers, creeks and farm ponds, a rock, tree stump or maybe a bucket served as a chair. Usually, bream and catfish were the catch of the day.

     Pat and I got to go along with him about the time I started school. Old Hickory Lake was still in the creation stage so dad would seek out a favorite spot along Spencer Creek back when he could drive along a dirt path beside the creek until he found a suitable spot to stop, the banks of Stones River had many good spots when we moved closer to town. Pat and I were still a bit young and had short attention spans, dad spent a lot of time telling us to stop throwing rocks in the water or sit down and be quiet as we were scaring the fish away but somehow we learned to fish.

     It was quite a few years before dad acquired a cheap casting reel that would get his bait further out. He spent a fair amount of time unraveling the back lash in the line until he got a nice spincast reel that eliminated the back lash but the cane poles were ever-present for years to come.

     Bank fishing was the order of the day until about 1960, that's when he had a carpenter friend build him a John boat. All of a sudden there was no place he couldn't get to on the lake. Now dad started planning his vacation around crappie season, imagine fishing every day for two weeks straight. The boat allowed him to do another type of fishing - trot-lining.

      Trot-lining is when you tie a long line (75- 100 feet) to a point on the shore and run it out into the lake or river, one end would be anchored down so the line would be submerged several feet. Hooks were tied to lengths of line maybe 10 inches long and attached to the trot-line about every 18 inches and baited with small bream or old meat. The aim was to attract and catch catfish and dad was very good at it. The line had to be checked and baited every day, the fish were cleaned and put in a freezer waiting for a fish fry cookout later in the summer.

     Now that you understand that dad was a fisherman, I'll tell you the story Clint told me.

     I'm still unclear of the year but at some point in time dad had put out a trot-line, I guess he was not on vacation as he couldn't get to check it but every few days, Clint would check it for him when he could. Clint discovered that when he checked and baited the line and came back later to check it the hooks were all empty of bait and fish which was unusual. He told dad what he found and dad determined he had a trot-line thief running his line so he set out to catch the thief. 

     Dad went out and baited the line one day and went home but he got up before sunrise the next morning and laid in wait in view of the line. It didn't take long after sun rise before a boat approached his line and a stranger started removing fish.

     At this point dad approached the stranger and confronted him. He told the man that the line belonged to him and he was lucky dad didn't have a gun. The stranger looked at dad and said I guess you have caught me. The stranger told dad that he had watched him and knew what days dad would check the line and on the days he didn't the stranger would remove and rebait the line and check it the next day before dad or Clint got there. 

     Normally the stranger would say he was sorry, promise not to do it again and leave but this time things took a different turn of events. The stranger told dad he would like to make a deal with him, he would see to it the line was baited every day and whenever dad ran the line all he had to do was remove the fish and the stranger would do the rebaiting that way they would both benefit. In addition, if dad needed more fish all he had to do was look in the freezer on the stranger's dock and take what he wanted.

     Strangely enough the two of them became fishing buddies and good friends till the day dad died, the man showed up for his funeral, had I known I would have shook his hand.

     That was more than 40 years ago, I have a lot of memories about fishing with dad and although I didn't know about this one until a few weeks ago it will now be among the best of them. Wherever dad is, I hope the fish are biting.