[AT] Very OT, my first fishing trip...

[Dick Day]

Since this seems to be a slow ATIS day, I thought I would share a posting 
from my Facebook blog...




First off, no sane person would ever admit to any of this. Please keep this 
just between us.

I did go fishing once. After over half a century, the details are a bit 
sketchy, but this is how I remember it...

I was about 8 or so. My friend lived across the street (they were one of the 
rich families on the block, they had a COLOR television). They also had a 
boat. During the summer, they usually went fishing on Lake Roland. "Uncle 
Joe" invited me to go fishing with them one Sunday. My parents said ok, so I 
went on my very first (and last) fishing trip.

We were not on the water but a short while and they handed me my very own 
pole. Once I saw them actually catch a fish, I handed the pole back 
wondering how these people could sleep at night, knowing they had actually 
killed a living creature (you may have guessed that I never went hunting 
either, and yes... I do eat meat).

I left them to do their slaughtering and wandered around the boat (pretty 
good size as I remember, of course, I also remember my father's Renault as a 
pretty big car, so the boat could have been a dingy, not sure now). I was in 
the front of the boat (bow? stern? I like "front" better) and saw a cooler. 
You need to know that, unlike most kids of that era, I was a real porker in 
those days. I was also bored out of my mind and just knew the cooler was 
filled with goodies. Sure enough there was ham, all nicely wrapped in foil. 
So, I figured they wouldn't mind if I ate early (surely they were going to 
feed me, right?).

Did you know that people actually use "ham" as bait? Me either. This part of 
the trip is not the least bit sketchy, they were NOT happy, they ran out of 
bait much earlier that they had planned and the fishing trip was cut very 
short (while it seemed like we were on that killing vessel for days, I'm 
thinking were were in the water less than an hour).

My friend and I remained friends but for some reason I was not invited back 
for any more fishing trips. While it was a miserable time for all on that 
trip, I like to think that I was solely responsible for saving the lives of 
dozens of innocent fish that day.

Dick Day