Fishing

Spring is the catalyst for observations that trigger an atavistic memory of another time.

Just the other day, a neighbor child sauntered down to a meadow pond well below my house windows. I was sitting on a deck watching him. He tossed his line into the pond and got an immediate strike.

The next thing I see is this 12-year-old running up our hill heading to his home next door to ours. I figured he enjoyed the experience and was heading home to do some school homework.

Wrong!

Almost immediately he runs out of his back yard with two fishing polls and a large tackle box. I loved it. There is nothing nicer than an active fishing hole for a youngster.

I remember when I was a child of about twelve and I went fishing alone on a slow moving stream. The property belonged to good friends of my parents. The owner of the property had been trying for weeks to catch a large trout, without success.

I caught his fish, much to his surprise and chagrin.

What’s nice about current observations is that they often  trigger long ago memories.