Nice read. Thanks. I, too, have lots of memories of growing up fishing & camping. Mom had 5 older brothers and they all had several children so I had a lot of older cousins. I remember my Aunt Nell making a big breakfast for the whole crew one dark morning before we all went out on Millwood Lake in Arkansas. One of those uncles came by one time and checked me out of school when I was 16 because "the fish are biting and I need a boat paddler." I had my first beer that day, an Old Milwaukee, and we got in a redear bed and caught em until we ran out of crickets. I'll always remember that day! I'm still close with some of my cousins even though all my uncles and aunts have passed on. My mom was the baby of the family; she had 5 older brothers and 3 of them were fighting in WWII when she was born in 1943. I loved all of those good old men and I have lots of memories, dirty jokes, fishing tales, and war stories that I like to retell to my friends when we get together. My cousins and I still laugh until we almost cry over some of those stories and we enjoy retelling them every time we get together. They're just as funny each time as they were the last time. I wish I could tell you all about "Bohunk in the wagon yard, the old woman sitting on a rock, the little Coke bottle, Tex from Amity, and Huey wants some fish," but I better not.
Mama Flossie was Dad's mother. She was a great farmer, cook, story teller, and avid fisherwoman from way back. I remember when we would take her fishing, she liked to fish river lakes up and down the Ouachita River near the towns of Camden and Hampton, Arkansas. She always took boiled eggs, soda crackers, and vienna sausages when she went fishing and did she ever like fishing!!! She wore a big wide brimmed straw hat and she had a real cane pole. She taught me how to hook a "minner" and I can still hear her voice say "there he goes" when her cork would slowly sink under that dark river lake water. She also loved wild game. She would pick through and feel each and every squirrel we would bring in and pick out the tender young ones. Often, she would have the first couple of young ones fried up and ready to eat by the time we finished skinning the others. She also would pet and rub on every buck deer someone brought to the farm to hang up and clean. She called them her pets. She didn't eat venison, but she would cook up big platters of it up for us. Flossie passed away in 1995 at the age of 87. I still miss her terribly, but those memories will always be with me. I've not had any peas & cornbread as good as hers' since. My dad still owns the old farm and I go there often to deer hunt. My kids go there a lot and seem to enjoy the place, even though they never met her.
Dad took me fishing a lot when I was little, but he liked to stay too long for me and I remember how hot that aluminum boat seat would get on a summer day. I'm sure I had already drank the Shasta drinks and eaten the snacks he had packed for us way before noon and was ready to go home before he was. He says that he was sitting on a bream bed and was catching big ones one after the other just as fast as he could bait up and I was crying to go home. I don't remember it, but its probably true. I remember being threatened numerous times with a "boat paddle whoopin," but I don't recall ever getting one. Dad and I really became good fishing partners after I grew up some and was in my late teens. I remember he, my Uncle Bill, and I found a crappie hole at White Oak Lake near Camden, Arkansas and we tied to a little gray stob sticking up out of the water and caught over 100 crappie. That would have been back in 1987 or 1988. We kept them all..........I suppose the statute of limitations has run out since then. I remember my uncle "got too hot" and couldn't clean fish when we got home and I, of course, didn't know how to filet them close enough to the backbone to suit my dad (you had to be able to "read a newspaper" through that fish's backbone or you were wasting good meat.) I had rib cage duty. He and I cleaned fish for probably 2 hours that afternoon and I knew that I had grown up after that trip...........no more running to the house and getting in the cool AC while the men cleaned fish. I had become one of the men!
Luckily for me, my dad is still around and he and a friend of mine are camping at Lake Greeson in Arkansas right now. They caught 50 crappie yesterday and I'm sure are back at it today while "some folks like me gotta work." I plan on heading that way just as soon as I get off work this afternoon and my son and I are gonna stay in a camper with them. My cousin is coming Saturday evening to camp with us, and we're gonna fish, grill, tell stories, cut up, and make some new memories. Hopefully my son will remember what he's hearing and doing and some of it'll be worthy of a spot in his mind when he's 46 and most of the rest of us are gone. GTT