Gone Fishin Ain't Sure for What

It took me a while but I finally learned how to water ski and my Dad would take me on long rides while my Mom watched to make sure I didn't fall.I jumped over waves and even did the one ski ride.
Sometimes the motor would get tangled in weeds and slow down.
I didn't want to fall, so did the worst possible thing a person could do.
I collected the rope until the boat picked up speed again and then slowly dropped it.
This way I didn't have to sink into the water.

I knew better than to collect the rope so it would tangle around me and always made sure to be very careful but when you are not supposed to do something, you shouldn't do it.

One day as I was collecting the rope, the boat jerked the rope out of my hand and my hand tangled in it and I fell.
My Dad immediately stopped the engine but the boat was still coasting.

The rope pulled up and the water pulled me down. I thought my arm was going to be ripped out of my shoulder socket.

Luckily the boat stopped before that happened.

My Dad called out to see if I was ok and being stubborn, not wanting a lecture about rope collecting lol ....I said Ya.Fine! lol

So he revved up the boat and put it in gear again to go.
My arm hurt so badly I couldn't use it so I used my left hand and just pretended to hold the rope with my right to rise up out of the water.lol

Thank fully I did my ride and when my Dad swerved the boat around to shore, I was able to let the rope go and coast in to the wharf on my skiis to sit on it.
If you did things right, you'd leave dry and come in dry. lol

My shoulder hurt a few days and then got better but now I knew not to collect the rope to look like a hero. lol
There is never such a thing as control.

The family loved fishing. So one day my Mom got into the boat with the tackle box and rods. We just put the boat in and forgot to insert the plug under the motor, which we take out to empty any excess water that might be in it. The boat was always cleaned after each use and washed out with clean water and drained once we pull it out onto the trailer.

As my Dad went to get the other stuff, the boat began to sink. My Mom did not know how to swim. Instead of getting out of the boat, she stood there like a true captain, who goes down with the ship. lol
When my Dad saw her, she was already knee deep in the boat at the motor end, holding all her stuff high up in the air.
We laughed at her later and told her what if it was deep? Did you not think you could drown? Her answer was, the thought never crossed her mind.

My Dad said this was the mark of a true sports man. My Mom was extremely happy to know she was a hero for saving the tackle box and fishing rods. lol
Not that they were ever in trouble to begin with.

Not long ago in BC, we had such an incident where the ferry boat was sinking, and the crew jumped off the ship first, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves. lol This is unheard of and truly disgraceful since they know where all the safety equipment is.
Most people escaped but
One older couple was missing and upon investigation, it seems the ship went off course because the crew was high on pot and some apparently having sex , they were not looking where they were going.
----------

Our family liked to cast and before starting, each took a spot on the boat further away from the other so as to keep it safe.
The hook I had was three pronged, attached to this red and white striped oval metal piece.
These were good to catch pike but other fish liked them as well. They twirled well and shone to attract attention.

I turned to look behind me to make sure it was safe, put the rod back and as I was bringing my arm forward to cast, my Mother decided to stand up.

The hook really caught her good.
One prong went into the crease behind the ear where it attaches to the head and the other sewed the lobe in and out.
My Mom grabbed her ear and I was devastated when I saw what I did.
I thought she was going to be deaf.

My Dad rushed to shore,jumped out of the boat, into the car and in less than a minute they were off to the hospital with this new pierced earring hanging from her ear, leaving me behind with the boat.
With a deep sinking feeling of guilt, I put everything away and went home.
I sat and waited and waited and waited.
They left at 2 pm and now
it was midnight and they were still not back.

With each passing minute I was feeling worse and worse
And then I saw lights coming and they were back.
I ran outside and my Mom said my Dad wanted to stay home in the city but she knew I'd be worried so they came back, after a little rest.
I sighed a sigh of relief.

They had to cut into the crease of the ear to pull that part of the hook out and stitch it but the other side, which sewed up the ear lobe, they just cut off the hooky part to take out.
After her tetanus shot she was allowed to leave.
Needless to say, I lost my taste for fishing after that.
I never went again.

I kept thinking:
What if it had been her eye or if I Ripped her cheek open.She would have been scarred for life.
My Mom had beautiful skin and she always took such good care of herself.

Then I thought about how the fish must feel. Until now, I was sure they had no feelings cause they had no nerve endings but now I wasn't so sure.

I know when we cut off a cat fish head, it didn't stop it from biting nor did it stop the body from jumping on the skillet a full two minutes before it stopped.
We'd give it a stick to bite and it would really clamp down on it.

These fish grow to 8 feet and have been known to grab rabbits, ducks and even kids off the shore.
We have a Nessie in these waters, so who knew what else we had and here we are fishing not knowing really how these creatures feel.

My Dad never said a word but his face said it all.
I guess he didn't want to start talking cause he didn't trust himself to say the right things but I knew he was mad and he already probably got an earful from my Mom telling him it was a mistake.

The next day we talked and I asked her why she got up?
I checked before casting and I was already half way doing it when she got up without looking.

You should check on what other people are doing before getting up in a boat.
At this point, there was no way to stop it from happening.

To this day I still feel bad but she was a good sport and a hero cause she never uttered a word.
There wasn't a peep coming out of her through the whole ordeal.

Again we had a story and something to laugh about later about my Mother. lol
It wasn't funny except for the fact she did something we were taught not to do.

Our car License Bureau says: There is no such thing as an accident.
Hello!.........They've attached new meanings to what an accident is???
An accident is caused by misjudgement. People are human. They make mistakes.
Machines have no brain. They make no judgement decisions at all so they too make mistakes if changes they are not programmed for take place.Machines hiccup as do computers.
In fact if you have a hacker or a person feeding it false info, machines like computers, can create a catastrophe.

There is always a wise guy somewhere trying to play with your brain.
No matter how prepared you are, shit happens.

------------------------Central Station Copenhagen Symphony Orchestra ---------



Have a good one.
:)

Dollar Down Dollar a Week.

In the 50's what we call abuse today was prevalent. The idea was spare the rod spoil the child.
However no one complained cause every one had their turn lol
Kids were not wooses like they are today, always complaining.
Spanking was a way of life and I am not sure it was a bad thing.

No kid ever got damaged from a spanking and it wasn't like what they did to people in hospitals.
I got spanked and all my friends got spanked. We'd see big guys with beards get chased by their little Fathers with a stick but not one ever laid a hand to their parent. Kids were good kids in those days and we all grew up to be good family people.

My Dad was strict but he was also the life spirit in our house.
My Mom was meticulous about cleanliness as she was a surgical nurse before coming to Canada. During the war she saw lots of blood and in the camps the doctors made it her job to help them. If she did not give them the right instruments she'd get slapped, so she learned quickly, but her nature was against blood so when she'd see it she would get dizzy and almost faint. I'd always laugh and ask: Mom, what kind of nurse were you? and she'd give me a sour look lol

But her floors were clean enough to eat from and she would always complain if we did something to dirty them. She ironed and especially loved to hang her clothes outside in winter so they came in a little damp cause they were frozen, but so fresh smelling and the rest of the drying they did on hangers before being ironed. We did the same with the Carpet in winter. We'd take it out into the snow and throw snow on it and then broom it off on both sides and then bring it back in. The carpet would always look great. This was a great job for kids to do and I enjoyed it a lot. Who said cleaning sucks. lol
I never remember using chemicals on it. People get sick because of these chemicals. In our house we only used Parissienne Javel.

I was not exposed to dance or ballet or piano but I was exposed to other things. My Mom handled story telling, reading and writing. My Dad played the guitar and my Mom and would sing. We both had good singing voices.
She was very critical about the writing and it had to be perfect. How many times I'd be in tears because I didn't do a letter the way she wanted it.
But eventually I got smart and told her my hand writing was better than hers and she'd laugh cause then I would tell her to write the way she wanted me to. lol
Pressure always made you look for solutions to your problems and made you of stronger mind than people who have things done for them, problems solved for them.

I had my own bike which I had to keep spotless and I took great pride in it. My Mom would always check at night to make sure I slept but she slept in the early morning and I had plenty of time before school to take off on my bike and she never knew. Mornings were so nice especially in the fall.

My Dad was a hands on man, very athletic and liked to do everything himself. He loved cars and would tinker with them and I would be at his side. I loved the smell of oil and gas and grease. His cars had lots of chrome and white tires and I would love to help him polish cause driving a spiffy car was special. I asked him one day to teach me about motors but he refused and told me to keep my hands clean and be a lady.

I had animals like rabbits ducks kittens and dogs. He'd take me to the farm to see horses and tell me about how he worked on one for a year, to pay his sponsor for his boat ride across the ocean.
He had two huge draft horses to till the land with and he said they were the nicest animals but the farmer beat them and they feared him . If they saw him coming they'd go nuts. He said one day he brought them into the barn and didn't see the farmer coming but the horses did and they almost killed him trying to get away. The farmer was always drunk and not very nice.
The horses broke the supporting beam to the barn and it collapsed. He said it was a very thick beam.

After this episode my Dad went and complained to the farmers' brother, also a farmer and this one was a good guy, so he took him away to work for him and my Dad sighed a sigh of relief.
He said he was given a truck to drive and this guy was a well to do farmer as well as a good family man and he lent money to people because of hard times.

Every week he would make his rounds to see what he could collect back, a dollar here, a dollar there. People were honest and paid back what they could so his pocket was always full of money.lol
Then they would come home and he'd ask my Dad if he ever ate steak. My Dad said yes he did. The farmer said not like this one and then he'd take a huge thick steak and flip it a few times over a hot skillet and served it to him.
Those were lean times when steak was not that accessible so my Dad said he ate it with him with such delight. After this He always made steak at home with the same delight this farmer served him his first Canadian steak.
After that first year paying off the sposor was done, my Dad and his Dad carried two jobs to help save money. Every one worked.
My aunt and grand mother at a sewing factory and the guys in a garage and then later in huge companies like Canadian Vickers and Canada Air as machinists. European people were hired quickly because everyone knew they knew their jobs and were quite educated.

Before long they bought a lot and built a house. My Dad got married and then bought his own lot and began building his own house and I was born into this constructive time.

In between they grew gardens, pickled winter preserves. We'd go berry picking. He taught me about mushrooms. We'd go in the fall around 4:30 am into farmers woods to collect them.
The woods had rich black soil and I so enjoyed foraging with him through them. We'd come home with bags full which we had to dump right away and clean in salty water to get any little worm that might have crawled in, out.
My Mom would take over and wash them, cook them and then pickle them. They made their own shredded salted cabbage, and pickled guerkins as well as tomatoes and jams. We'd go apple picking and she made apple sauce and put that away for winter.We had rhubarb she also cooked and canned.
One time we went apple picking and my Dad found a wounded hawk. He brought it out of the woods and we saw one of the claws was frozen shut and it could in no way be opened. Seems it was shot by a hunter. So we took it home and my Mom laid out one room wall to wall with newspaper.
The bird ate a whole fresh turkey and behaved itself. We let it walk freely in the room. When he had to go, he'd lift his tail and shoot and we never knew how he did it, but he always found a tiny spot that was not covered with paper for the thing to fall on. So we had to clean it up quickly.
My Mom never got mad. Everyone was so impressed with this bird because he never missed a shot lol.
Well after three -four days and one turkey he was strong enough to let go and so we took him outside and he flew away but not before thanking us.
You think animals don't understand but they do. He flew in a circle came back and gave us a look to say thanks, before disappearing into the horizon.
Summers I spent swimming and helping to paint stairs, pulling weeds, reading. I had a great thirst for books for they were my window to the world.
These are things kids don't do today. Later on we built a second floor to our house and this I partook in. Our area was zoned for bungalows but then duplexes began to spring up so we had to upgrade so to speak.
My Dad gave me a job to clean the old bricks from the front of the house we took off and we used them for the side. The front got brand new white stones which were quite beautiful. Later he got another lot to build a country house and we spent every spare moment with hammer and nails. I learned what team work was like, with my Dad.
We'd work till noon and then went fishing and water skiing. Those days were my favorite days. I'd love to take the boat out. He got it second hand from a retired newspaper man. It had a siren and a 75 horsepower motor and you could even sleep in it. We tried it a few nights for the fun of it and slept in the middle of the river surrounded by bull frogs. It was great!
Then in the early dawn we'd catch fish for break fast and head on to my friends' camping ground to cook them.
My Dad loved camping so he got an axle from the junk yard and he welded himself a metal box frame. Before we knew it we had a fold out camping trailer. Then he got some canvas and sewed a tent to go over it. He got foam to make mattresses with. We had the best time with this trailer before we got the lot and he decided he liked the area enough to settle into a country house.

When we went home I used the trailer as my tree house in the back yard. It was my special place to go to play in.
Of course we had friends come over. My neighbor was always a princess and when we played dress up she would go into her dream land pretending. My dream was I was an amazon woman. I lived in a forest surrounded by danger and my friends were lions. Sorta like Tarzan, I had my own island and if anyone needed rescuing I was there to provide them secretly, with safety food and warmth. The trick was to never to be found out. lol

My aunt spent her money on clothes and parties and my Dad spent his, dollar down dollar a week on nails lol
Everything was a learning experience for my Mom and I and it was a good healthy life.

:)

Skipper Taking Care of Business

This is Skipper taking care of his tuna business He knows his rights and is man of his domain
He was such a cute character that so many people paid attention to him instead of the two handsome sailors on the boat who were clearly jealous they were not getting the same attention.

You always get a feeling of whole someness seeing people animals and life working together.
Life at sea must be the best life in the world.
I remember when my Dad had a boat we could sleep in and we'd take it out a bit into the river and slept listening to the bull frogs. I never forgot it.
Then at 4 am it was easy to drop a line and catch breakfast which we then went on shore to fry over a nice fire.
One always wonders why people, having nice clean homes, spend so much money to go sit in the dirt with the mosquitoes and charcoal from wood fires.
It's because no matter how great life is at home, man's spirit longs to be wild, free
and natural.
:)
Here are some Movies Fish like to watch
Marlin Rouge
Jurassic Carp
The Blair Fish Project
Pulp Fishin’
Silence of the Lemmings
The Codfather
Cast Away
O Batter, where art Thou?
Titanic
Home Abalone
Forrest Gubby
The Full Manta Ray (The Full Monty)
Jaws
Pearl Harbour
Final Fintasy
Mullet (An Australian current (sic) release)
Waterworld
Happy Gilmore

Have a great day!

Lake Champlain's Champ

I wrote about Champ before but now more and more people have seen him/her in Lake Champlain.
With the flooding in this lake and the Richelieu River, we have no way of knowing where he is. He is as elusive as Big Foot which more and more people see as well, and believe that now
Big foot might be either Indian Shamans, sent into the wild for ten years becoming wild or a man we have forgotten existed and lives in the wild.

Well Champ also has this same kind of story. They believe he may be a left over from dinosaur times.
Having done a lot of swimming in this area myself, I do know one thing which no one talks about.
Apart from the many different kind of fish this area holds, such as bass, sunfish, perch, pike,sturgeon and walleye, it also sports eels.
Not many people eat eels, nor do they eat the other fish because of pollution, so the fish in this lake and river could grow to be very big as well.

This Champ, looks snake like, almost like a huge eel.
Size changes behavior and we did have a boat broken in half in which fishermen like ourselves, were fishing in. Could be they caught themselves one huge eel and it broke their boat in half, killing the boaters, who were never found.

I remember snorkeling once in murchy water because a storm was brewing and the waves were getting to be high for the area.All of a sudden I came face to face with an eel.
It couldn't see me and I couldn't see it and we bumped mask and muzzle.
It got scared as did I and we both got out of each others way. lol

Snorkeling allows you to see eel behavior . On the US side they have Fort Montgomery along the edge of the shore line. I am not sure if the US did anything to rebuild it like we did Fort Lennox just up the river a bit, but if you snorkel it's easy to see one of these eels digging with such exuberance underneath, at the stone wall with their mouths and noses, to get at something.
You can't help but think, I am glad that's not me they are trying to get at.

There was a time they had huge cat fish who would come to shore and grab ducks.

This Champ just might be a huge eel, which means people need to be careful in good ol Lake Champlain and Richelieu River because just maybe, if there is one such huge eel, then there might be others and that's not even mentioning the catfish and other big fish growing and untouched due to toxic food intake.

Man sure gets a prize for killing nature. People used to drink this water and this area had so much to offer to growing families who brought their children out to enjoy life at its best.

I don't live there anymore but I sure do not forget all the time I spent on this river. In some ways I was Huckleberry Fin because I could have lived there for ever with the bull frogs and tad poles and so many different fish fries.
I do not forget all the dreams I had there and how I played out the historical dramas of Samuel de Champlain and the Iroquois. So much history can be found by Ol McCallums farm.

They were all good people . All gone now leaving their places and history to those who do not appreciate it as much as it should be.

So ol Champ makes his debut once in a while, to tell us all to be ware. He is still there. He is not afraid and he is still watching,taking care of his lake and river.

Some say that along this area are swampy bogs which go in so deep, that once you go in, you will find it hard to find your way out. Lots of things grow in there and it would be a terrific place for eels such as ol Champ to nest in.

Have a wonderful day :)

Educated Guess

Our Lamaze class included a tour of the pediatric wing of the hospital. When a new baby was brought into the nursery, all the women tried to guess its weight, but the guy standing next to me was the only male to venture a number.

"Looks like 9 pounds," he offered confidently.

"This must not be your first," I said.

"Oh, yes," he said. "It's my first."

"Then how would you know the weight of a baby?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I'm a fisherman

Cat Fish Dog

Rappers love money and power and this catfish represents a lot of power.
It is a fish which will not think twice to grab an animal, a child or even a sparrow from the banks of a river. It has a tremendous thirst for life and living.
Its a survivor surpassing even death. An amazing fish.

I rapped my way to cat fish mall

There lay a cat fish 8 feet long

He looked at me and I at him

I said you’re fucked You have some gaul.

You ate a fish and I ate 10

And I ain't half as tall as him

the cat fish jerked his head at me and

pierced his whisker into a tree

I gafawed at this lame display

But saw at once this was no game

The quill went into bark and tree and

this could very easily have been me.

The muscles rippled in his head and

I knew he was not dead.

His body quivered his eyes were cold

But for sure he was not dead.

He did the rap against the tree.

The Michael Jackson moonwalk next

And As he kept his eye on me.

I yelled hey friend, be cool, be cool,

It wasn't me who threw the spool and

caught your horny head on hook

With toothy smile the wide mouthed gape,

He lunged again to take his bait.

Not learning once or twice or thrice

That eating me was not so nice.

The butcher then chopped off its head but

Like a bull dog, he wasn't dead.

He wanted food and I was it

He wouldn’t learn

He was not dead.