A SHOCKING FISHING TRIP

Turning back the many dog-eared mental pages for many years, I recall an interesting fishing trip on the Guadalupe River near Seguin, Texas. It was with my uncle Harvey and my grandfather. My uncle was probably one of the best fresh water fishermen that I have ever known and a fishing trip with him always produced plenty of fish for the table. On this particular trip I am thinking of, we were in an old homemade wooden boat that my grandfather had made, and it had an old Firestone 3.5 horsepower motor on it. Picture this: this motor had no reverse, no neutral, no cover and a bare sparkplug sticking out of the back and a small gas tank on top. It was at least updated from the old “wrap the rope around the flywheel and pull” to an actual recoil starter rope. However with this motor, because it had forward only, you better be headed in the direction you wanted to go when you started it. Our destination was a little slough off of the main river. To enter this slough you had to cross a wide shallow sandbar which entailed lifting up the motor a foot or so, (while it was running) so that the prop would not hit the bottom. I had seen my uncle perform this feat many a time. This brought on the following dialog: “Can I run the motor today I asked?” “Do you think you can do it?” my uncle said with a smile as he exchanged glances with my grandfather who also began smiling.

“I know that I can I said, after all I am eight years old” I said with a little bit of pride showing. “Well let’s see” he said as he moved from his seat and motioned me to the back of the boat. Trying to stay cool but unable to suppress a silly grin, I moved to the back of the boat tripping over the seat in my anxiousness to get to the long awaited task at hand. I pushed the choke in, just as I had seen my uncle do many times before and pulled the starter rope several times as my uncle and grandfather looked on. When several pulls produced no results, my uncle suggested that I turn on the gas valve as they chuckled. Having done this the motor started right away. In my eagerness to start the motor I didn’t pay any attention to where we were headed. My grandfather was in the front of the boat so he got most of the impact from the overhanging willow branches but luckily no harm was done other than a lot of embarrassment on my part and a good laugh from my uncle. We headed for the slough and when we got to the sand bar my uncle said, “don’t forget to lift the motor at the sand bar.” I said “No, I won’t” and proudly reached over the top of the motor to lift it up a ways as I had seen my uncle to do so many times. As soon as I did this I was shocked “quite literally” which brought great guffaws of laughter from my uncle and grandfather, who evidently had been anticipating this moment, and it brought great pain and even more embarrassment to myself. I am not sure which was worse, the pain or the embarrassment. My uncle, still laughing unmercifully said, “I forgot to tell you, be careful not to touch the sparkplug.” By that time the motor had struck the sand bar and stopped, which brought much to my chagrin more laughter. I don’t remember how many fish we caught that day, but I did learn a valuable life lesson that day not to touch that or any other sparkplugs!

Thought for the day: Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s mistakes can shorten it…….