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+--- Thread: Always Was, Always Will Be (/showthread.php?tid=2510)
Always Was, Always Will Be - rememory - 06-18-2001
I used to live in Texas, near the DFW area. Raising two children on my own had a few tough times there, to say the least. We lived outside a (then) small town called Weatherford. A simple life, I suppose... I worked all day, sometimes into the evening. I did not get to see my children as much as I wanted. The week days always crawled by, seemingly never ending. The weekends belonged to the three of us though.<br>Saturday morning, I'd wake the kids up bright and early. This day evolved into our fishing day though the course of springs, summers and falls together.<br>Sometimes, we bought worms at the little bait shop on the way to the lake, but usually, we dug them out of the ground with our shovels. My kids had their own shovels, and I let them have at the ground. Being very young though, I did help them, but only after they covered themselves in mud and muck. (Such a memorable site.)<br>We loaded their worms and their bugs bunny and tweety bird fishing poles into the back of my Dodge truck.<br>A quick word about where we lived at this time. We lived on Weatherford Lake, but we did not fish there. Something about driving in the early morning, watching my kids stare out the window in sweet anticipation, always seemed much more enjoyable than walking down to the waters edge.<br>Anyway, I drove to a much smaller lake, called Sunshine Lake. Nowdays, it's called Cartwright Park, named after some historical woman from Weatherford. Neverthemind that, because it will always be Sunshine Lake to me. When we drove inside the gates, the kids never failed to start jumping getting giddy in their car seats. What joy that was..<br>My parking spot was ten feet from the dock/water's edge. <br>For anyone who has ever taken a small child fishing, then you know it's impossible for them to sit still with a fishing pole.....waiting....and waiting.... It's physically impossible, but hilarious to watch. Imagine two of them.... oiy...<br>I casted their hooks out far enough in the water, they had to reel and reel for a few minutes each, just to bring it back. I never figured out how they did it, but as the kids reeled back their hooks, they would catch the prettiest perch in the lake. There's nothing in the world like hearing small kids yelling (and I mean YELLING) "Daddy Daddy! A fish, I caught a fish!! I had two kids, running up and down the bank with a poles in hand, tripping on mud and sand pits, screaming about fish. I could calm them down long enough to finsih reeling the fish in, but the second that poor fish popped onto the bank, off the kids went again. "Daddy Daddy! A fish, a fish!" <br>They had absolutely no fear of grabbing the poor fish, and yanking the hook out. Over the course of a few months, they did learn how to retrieve the hook correctly. A small pity I personally took on the fish... <br>I spent most of my Saturdays this way, baiting hooks, chasing kids, and saving fish. I don't think the kids ever caught anything other than perch. Perhaps that's the only fish living in that small lake. But, with the memories I keep of that lake, it always was, and always will be my favourite fishing spot.<br><br><br><br>Submit your Fishing Adventure Stories to win great prizes at ReMemory.Com