Ghost in the Graveyard

It was five o clock on a summer evening. My sisters, Evelyn, Barbara, Sarah, Nell, Christina,and Gina, and my brother Sam and myself were hurrying through our hotdogs and carrot sticks as the sun began to sink. We wanted to take advantage of every second of summer daylight. At the stove Mom supervised our progress, making sure nobody missed anything nutritious, and then finally told us to bring our plates to the sink and do our “jobs.” Evelyn filled the basin with hot water and soap and began scrubbing; Barbara and Sarah cleared the table and wiped away stray ketchup and carrots; Nell swept the floor while Nina, Sam and I tidied up the other rooms. Fifteen minutes and we had all finished except Evelyn, since dishes took the longest of all the chores. Thankfully our good Mom took over the sink and let us go play. We raced outside.
Not far from the back door stood the giant maple tree with the tree house and the giant net that served as a ladder and the sand pile beneath. We gathered there.
Evelyn, being the oldest, said, “I’ll count off. We’ll play Ghost in the Graveyard.”
“I want to count off this time,” said Barbara. She always relished an argument.
“No, let Evelyn do it,” protested Sarah. “Let’s just play.”
Sam and Gina, the youngest, clambered on the swings and soon were sailing away. Nell and I pushed them while Nina, with a twig, poked at a beetle on the tree.
The older girls made a treaty – Barbara would count off but she couldn’t be the first “Ghost.” So we huddled together except the two on the swings who were happily occupied anyway. Barbara started, tapping each shoe and chanting. “Bubble gum bubble gum in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?” The tapped shoe answered, “Five.” “One two three for five,” Barbara counted, and whatever shoe she tapped was out of the circle. This went on and on until only one shoe was left: Nell, as it happened. With a delighted “Yay!” she raced off to hide.
Now the rest of us had to wait. Since the sandpile sat almost in the center of the biggest side yard we all stood around the tree, heads bowed, in case Nelly wanted to hide in the immediate area. Barbara and I rolled out the count: “Onemississippitwomississippithreemississippifourmississippifivemississippisixmississippi" and onwards to “Onehundredmississippi!” It was a generous amount of time, but one ritual remained. Six kids put their hands to their mouths and yelled in chorus: “Apples Oranges Cherry Pie, if not ready holler Aye!” But no “Aye!” answered the call, and we went off in pursuit of the Ghost.
Sam and I ran to our right onto the driveway, crouching quickly to see if the Ghost was lurking under the big blue van or Dad’s green pick-up. Nina and Gina followed and peeked into the woodshed near the back deck. No Ghost. Barbara, Sarah, and Evelyn were scouring the sand pile yard and would be at the front lawn in a moment. I tugged Sammy’s shirt.
“Come on, the Blessed Mother Yard!” I hissed.
The yard on the other side of the gravel driveway displayed a two-foot high statue of Our Lady on a stone slab, surrounded by flat-bladed hostas. On every corner of the yard was a giant bush, perfect hiding spots. Sam sprinted to the farthest bush while I inspected the lilacs clinging to the side of the Red Shed. Still no Ghost, and no one else had screamed out the call yet. Where was Nelly hiding?
Sam reached the far bush, found nothing, and was barreling for the next when he looked up and jerked almost to a halt. He screamed: “Ghost in the Graveyard!” and as he screamed Nelly hurtled from behind the bushes’ fronds and gave chase. Sam switched his momentum towards the driveway and the sand pile with all the speed he could muster. But too late. Even as the others had heard Sam’s yell and were making all haste to the sandpile themselves, I saw that Nell was only a few feet behind her quarry. Soon it was all over. Sam was the next Ghost.

Addition

After more than a decade living in the Granby house, Dad decided to add on to it.

The original two-storied farmhouse was becoming too small for the growing family and we had enough property and means for such an addition to be feasible. So Dad hired his friend Doug for the job.

Doug was a tall and soft-spoken contractor who owned a small farm on the other side of Granby. Often we would go visit his few acres of field to gaze at his supply of geese, ducks, goats, and sheep. He also had a bull, unfortunately for me. One day when Dad and a few of us were admiring the enormous animal I grabbed hold of the metal fence and was swiftly electrocuted. Only a jolt, but enough to hate Doug’s bull forever and ever

Whenever Dad needed help with something, which was every so often, he called upon Doug and Doug always came. He would stride alongside the house in his black farmer boots, listening to Dad’s plans while gazing thoughtfully and silently at the outside structure. Then he would speak softly and quickly and Dad took in his every word. It is strange for a child to find someone who knows something that Dad doesn’t, and we watched in awe this Yankee magician explain the secrets of foundations and footings and metal flashing, and then stride silently to his white pick-up and drive away. His air of quiet authority lingered after him.

The addition grew little by little over the next couple years. It doubled the living space with a single, huge, L -shaped room in which the small arm became the new kitchen, the lower half of the big arm became the new dining area, and the upper half the new family room, all without dividing walls of any sort. Beneath lay the new basement, of the same dimensions. The roof of the upper portion was sloped and spacious, reaching so high in the kitchen where it connected with the original wall that Dad managed to house a nine-foot-tall Christmas tree quite comfortably in one corner. That was, of course, before the addition was fully completed. It took some time before the tiles and tables and cabinets and stove and sink fell into place; and until then the enormous expanse of the Addition offered plenty of room for various couches, bookshelves, and wide open stretches for horsing around. And how.

Table and Chairs

When I wrote the last post, I had forgotten about the gigantic wooden table that stood in the center of the old dining room and around which we gathered for years even after the Addition was completed. A blatent oversight, because that table surely stood as one of the chief articles of funiture that defined our house -- and our mealtimes.

The table took up most of the dining room. Its fat, pillar-like legs were firmly planted on the linoleum tile, each pair joined near the floor by a graceful wooden arch topped with a decorative knob. All very elegant, except that the knob at the lower end of the table continously fell off the arch onto the floor if sufficiently provoked. Mom likened it to the banister knob in It's a Wonderful Life which George Baily unthinkingly grabs and which always comes off in his hand. But our knob was unpredictable. Many times during dinner the conversation was interrupted by heavy clattering as the knob threw itself to the floor. At least we claimed it did. After all, it couldn't be our fault every time.

The seating arrangements were simple -- everyone wanted to sit next to Mom. For the nintey percent of us who failed to do that, there where other options, the most interesting being the plastic bench at the end of the table opposite Dad, where the tempermental knob resided. That, and the lack of a barrier between the occupants of the bench, provided prime conditions for mischief. I think that the Nell and Christina sat in the bench for the longest time since they usually were inseparable anyway.

Everyone else sat in blue plastic chairs or cushioned wooden ones. The plastic chairs gradually dimished due to a flaw in their design: the back legs tended to snap if you leaned the chair back a certain distance. Despite this weakness, we loved the blue chairs because we could stack them to (for us) a dizzying height and climb up and sit in a throne worthy of Tibetian Kings (or whoever sits on a blue throne) and lord it over the puny underlings who tried to dethrone the present king and who very often succeeded.

Friday Evenings

Every Friday evening, with few exceptions, Mom and Dad would go out and enjoy some quiet time together -- a visit to a local Catholic church, and then dinner and conversation. They had done this for so long that it became a habit for us kids as well and we knew that, no matter what happened, Mom and Dad were going out Friday night. For those few hours we had the run of the house . . . or at least as much as the older kids would allow.

The hour before their departure usually felt a little hectic. Mom, blond and slender and already dressed for the evening, would be preparing dinner for the hungry tribe wandering around the house: grilled cheese or hamburgers and the inevitable potatoes and greens. Then she would go to the basement laundrey room to bring up Dad's dress pants and shirt. Mom, it seemed, dressed everbody.

"Nobody take a shower until Dad gets back!" she would call, her voice echoing up the basement stairs into the old dining room. Woe to us if the hot water ran out. "Mary, remember to take the potatoes out of the stove when they're ready, please!"

"Yes, Mom!" Mary, the oldest girl, shouted back from somewhere on the first floor.

Then with a rumble of gravel under truck wheels Dad would come in the driveway. He hurried in the back door and almost tripped over Barbara and Sarah playing hobbos among the coats and shoes piled around the back door entrance. "Hey guys, don't fool around, Mommy and I are going out soon. HONEY! I'M HOME!"

"I've got your clothes laid out on the bed!" Mom called, this time from their upstairs bedroom.

Dad, loosening his work tie, walked through the old kitchen and old dining room and down the basement stairs to take his shower. Our house had been doubled in size by the addition of the new kitchen, dining room, and family room on the southern side, but unfortunately there was still only one shower. Of course, as always, we managed. Usually.

Coming back to the first floor Mom paused from her breakneck pace to watch Rob play a computer game at one corner of the old dining room, under the suspended china cabinet. Her face lit up with her sunny smile. "Ohhh, wow, a new game, huh?" she said in that sudden teasing manner peculiar to her. "What's this one?"

"Castles: Seige and Conquest," Rob murmured, engrossed in designing one of the medieval fortresses which would protect his virtual property from invaders. It was probably a comforting excercise since his actual property never was very secure with his younger siblings around. Mom watched for a few moments, then glanced at the dining room clock.

'Ahhhh!" she cried, drammatically, still smiling and rushing into the nearby bathroom (which had a bathtub that leaked and therefore one more reason why the only shower was confined to the basement bathroom). Meanwhile Dad had finished his wash and thumped up the stairs to the old dining room, which really stood in the center of all the activity and served as a kind of center stage. Rob still clicked away at the computer.

"Where's Michael?' Dad asked, alluding to the oldest. Michael's room lay behind a plywood wall between the basement stairs and computer on which Rob was playing; the room had been a small sitting area now enclosed for the privacy of the high school junior.

Rob shrugged. "Bill knows," he replied. Bill was Rob's foil in just about everything, since they were one after the other in age and had markedly different personalities -- Rob extravagantly hilarious and Bill wryly ironical. Whenever they would begin a comedy routine everyone would end up hurting their sides with laughter. At the moment however Dad looked worried.

"DEBBIE!" he yelled.

"HERE!" Mom called from behind the door immediately to Dad's right. Dad jumped.

"Oh, there you are. I'm almost ready. Ten minutes?"

"Okay honey! I'm just cleaning up the sink -- somebody squirted toothpaste down the drain and it's clogged." Joseph, who had just entered stage right, turned and made an abrupt exit. "I think Joseph must have done it. Rob, make sure you keep an eye on everybody!"

Dad thumped upstairs to get dressed. Mom came out of the bathroom wiping toothpaste from her fingers with some toilet paper and looking as if her energy was starting to wear out. She caught Barbara and Sarah by the arm as they prowled past in the proper hobbo style. "Where's Evelyn? Tell her that it's her turn to read to the twins. Mary is taking care of Sam. What are you two wearing?" She lifted the hood of Barbara's rain jacket.

"We're hobos, Mom. Sarah is the daddy hobo and I'm the mommy hobo and we're looking for the cat to be the baby hobo. Joey doesn't want to be the baby hobo." Strange because Joe usually joined in the games with gusto. Mom shrugged her thin shoulders.

"If the cat scratches you, don't say I didn't warn you. And put those jackets back on the hook when you're done." The hobos nodded and prowled off in search of their progeny.

And after a few more minutes of commotion, warnings, and running up and down the stairs, Mom and Dad would leave for the evening. Their night of peace and quiet had begun. Our night, on the other hand, probably would be anything but. There was no way of knowing.

Series of Unfortunate Events Addendum

The following is a brief recount by Evelyn concerning her injury and my bee attack:

 Evelyn: Haha, that infamous barn day. I totally remember just sitting there by the shoes staring at the white fat oozing in that gaping scrape. I had run up from the side hill from the barn past everyone who was playing basketball and then just plunked down inside by the shoes, facing the door

 me:   I know it was the weirdest image, I remember looking at you vividly.

 Evelyn:  Yeah, and it was a while before dad brought me to the ER. I remember waiting on the leather couch that Joe bit a hole in with like an ice pack on it, crying, waiting for dad to take me

 me:  aw

 Evelyn:  I remember the bee day, too.And being so mad when you and Joe were taking your icy bath with those popsicles...although I thought they were chip and dale ice cream bars with the candy for eyes and nose. 

The Powell Series of Unfortunate Events

Part One: The Barn

Although the barn had a significant impact on our childhood play it also was a place that fostered a few of the grander Powell children accidents. Accident could be too light a word for these however. Let me rephrase them as “catastrophes.”

The first was not my own. It belonged to Evelyn, the second oldest girl. Evelyn was another scabby-kneed child with an unfailing sense of adventure and a ferocious passion for the outdoors. So it was to be expected when my mother said one thing, the young Evelyn did the very opposite.

“No playing in the barn!” My mother was a nervous hen, always calling out to the boys when they climbed too high in the great oak tree in the side  yard or shushed us when we screamed “bloody murder” for any reason but.  

“My nerves are shot,” my brave mother would report at the end of a long summer day. Bless her heart. At the time, we never realized how much strain we all caused from rough housing.

Evelyn had decided that day that she was indeed going to play in the barn.  I wish I could recap exactly what happened that afternoon underneath the barn, but I know very little.

From what I remember, Evelyn had been playing underneath the main floor of the barn where all kinds of fun items were. There were hay stacks with pitchforks, stone walls, and leaf piles with hidden pieces of wood underneath. And there were also doors—doors with glass windows—that also hid beneath fantastic climbing obstacles.

I was in the house when I heard a ruckus in the kitchen. I ran to find Evelyn sitting on the kitchen floor, her knee a gaping wound, with bright white specks scattered in the crevasse of blood. I was horrified. But, I also remember being extraordinarily intrigued.  A funny thing was, I don’t think she was even crying.

Evelyn got to go to the hospital and get her knee stitched up—something entirely too cool for any of us kids to even feel bad for her. When she came home and showed us, we were even more jealous. Her stitching was in the shape of a question mark.

The second catastrophe did belong to me and my Irish twin, Joe. It was a gloriously bright day. I couldn’t have been much older than five years old. We, too, neglected to listen to the finger wagging of my mother.

Immediately behind the barn was a large woodpile. The barn had begun to fall apart over the years and that was where all the wood and debris had accrued.  We had been so well versed playing on that wood pile that we knew exactly where to avoid: the rusty nails, the tight holes, and the rotted away wood. But, we didn’t know everything.

Joe was most likely leading me through a thick jungle dripping with the rainfall of summer. We were on the prowl for the ferocious lion, scared and excited all at once. We knew he was back there somewhere.

Suddenly, my foot stepped down hard on a loose piece of wood.

CRUNCH!

Before I knew what was happening, a swarm of bees had surrounded me, attacking every vulnerable part of my body—which was everywhere.  The angry cloud had found Joe, too, and were taking him down as well. Screaming violently, we tried to push them off of us and run away from the irate insects.

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” My father. He came bounding from the driveway and past the garden toward our screams. He had just pulled into the driveway from work and heard our cries. He picked us up, swiping the bees off our faces and necks, and sprinted toward the white farmhouse.

I lost touch with reality after being stung so severely. There is no memory between being saved from my Father and the ice cold bath I soon found myself in. We, too, went to the hospital. And we were even luckier than Evelyn. We got pink panther popsicles!

Part Two: Sam

 Sam is the youngest boy and second youngest kid in the clan. He was always getting his hands dirty and finding some sort of mischief. And he was always getting hurt one way or the other.

First there was Christmas about ten years ago. Sam was a little tyke at the time, about 5 years old. That year, my dad had bought a deliciously wide and tall tree. It filled the very back of the new addition, which would be later turned into the Family Room.  The tree was so big and bulky that my dad did a fantastically smart thing at the time—he wired the entire tree down to the floor. (The floor was still wood and hadn’t been carpeted yet.) So imagine a six-plus foot evergreen that was almost 5 feet across the middle wired down firmly to an unfinished floor. There were a lot of hidden candy canes that year.

Sam was playing beneath the tree, zooming a toy around the base. He was like a cat, enamored with the tree’s smell and being. Plus,. Being so small, it was as if he was inside his own little fort.

But, the safety of the “fort” did not last.  Somehow, someway, Sam achieved the impossible.  He caught himself on the wire, a piece shooting right through the top skin of his hand. He was stuck and there was no easy way of getting the poor kid off.

My mother, in her worrying haste, called my father. He was at his work’s Christmas party about 4 miles away. (My father works, and always has, for the local Sheriff’s Correctional Center.) He immediately came to the rescue like he always does and always will.  He cut the wire on each side of Sam’s hand and, once again, brought his child to the hospital.

Then there was Thanksgiving a couple years later. Holiday dinners are always an extremely bustling occasion in our home. Plates are shoved this way and that, kids are demanding food and being shushed, and laughter is erupting from every corner of the room.  Festivity crawls, walks, runs, flies, and zooms throughout every room. This is no different for the kitchen.

I just piled my plate high with turkey and mashed potatoes, heaped onto it a gleaming glop of golden butternut squash (my favorite!) and topped it all off with an amazing amount of gravy.  I was chattering excitedly about how many nuts I had cracked open and eaten before dinner (a Powell holiday tradition) when, without warning…

Sam came racing around the corner and flew right into my plate of food. The plate went flying and Sam went down. His forehead had connected right on the edge of the plate, leaving behind a truly impressive looking cut.  

I don’t think he’s going to ever let me live that one down. But it’s really just on par with his fate to find cuts and bruises.

Then there was the time that he was playing with our dog, Sally, in the back yard. Sally was a playful golden retriever that had been in our family for almost a decade. (We just recently had to put her down).  She was tied up to a zip line and racing back and forth with Sam.

And, as luck would have it, her line connected right with his neck, taking him down. Sally 1, Sam 0.

I suppose we can’t forget the time he was playing behind the barn (which, as you’ve learned by now, was not a lucky place). Falling from a tree, he fell and hit his head on a rck, drawing blood. The cool thing about Sam, though, is that he doesn’t seem to cry often. He came into the house, holding his blood in, and calmly told my mom what happened. No one believed him until he showed off the rock with blood on it beneath the tree.

Part Three:  Falling Sibling

Of course, there was an unspoken right-of-way into boyhood for the Powell boys. I’m pretty sure each and every one of them broke their arms at one point (or two). The greatest of broken arm stories belongs to Joe.

Right now, Joe is a placid and spiritual young man who is studying to be a preist in Rome. You would never know that would be his calling if you watched after him as a child. From all my playtime memories and what I know from what my mother has told, Joe was a wild child.

And there was one thing that Joe was always after: the big kids’ Game Boy.

For those of you that don’t know, the Game Boy was one of the first handheld gaming devices from   Nintendo. It was large and bulky and gray and the images were anything less than impressive. But it was the most fun toy to have crossed paths with the Powell boys.

My oldest brother, Mike, carefully hid his Game Boy from our younger, stickier hands. But Joe—oh dear old Joe— he could always find it. A fantastic young Powell trait is the power of sleuth since we were always after what the big kids had.  And Joe’s nose could sniff out those Game Boys.

Mike finally thought he had Joe tricked this one particular day. He had hidden his Game Boy at the very top of a large bookcase. To the youngster, that bookcase was like the Tower of Babel. There didn’t seem to be a top in sight and you knew it couldn’t be a good thing.

That didn’t stop Joe. He began the climb to the top of the bookshelf, grabbing his way toward the prize. As soon as he reached the top and his dirtied fingers clasped the gamer, the bookshelf began to tilt. And, as fate would once again have it for a young Powell, he fell, Game Boy in hand, resulting in a broken arm. And once again, a young Powell got to see the inside of a hospital.

Then, and finally since these stories might make one think there was only chaos within the Powell walls, there was the time I was playing alone in Joe’s room. He had his room set up just right so that you could jump from his bed to the dresser to his desk to the windows to the play chest to his bed again and never have to touch the floor.

I was doing just that, pretending that I was escaping the cracking and snapping jaws of really mean alligators.  

Just above the toy chest, there was a shelf that one could easily grab onto for support. On that shelf was a green-filled terrarium. In it, a large branch lay lazily on the floor and curved upwards. Hidden underneath the coolness of the wood were two very pleased geckos.  They were the most adorable creatures I have ever seen—I think that now, in my adulthood, I want to have some as friends in my home.

But, on that day, they did not want to be my friends in the slightest. As soon as I rounded the room for the fourth or fifth time, I lost my blance on the edge of the toychest. Frigtened about falling, I grabbed the closest thing I could for support—the terrarium. I flew backwards, taking the glass terrarium and  the little lizards inside with me. The glass case crashed and broke into a million pieces and sent the little animals flying. 

Luckily, I landed far from the glass and didn’t have a scratch. But I did feel terribly about breaking Joe’s terrarium.

My Starlit Golf Course

The golf course down the street from my house was a place of late evening adventure. I would spend countless summer nights running thought the darkening expanses of wet grass with my brothers and sisters, yelping childishly as one of them chased me. 

But there was more to the golf course than the patter of small feet and the glory of play. There was a mood that fell over the course that as a child I did not understand, but I grew to love. 

The night sky was brightly lit with the constellations as they danced alongside the golden moon. The various rows of small trees matched the rhythm of the night sky as the wind tickled the leaves and branches. 

Under the black and silver night canvas I would twirl. My hands extended outwards, palms turned upward, my face glowed beneath the glimmer of the country sky and I let my feet lose control. I spun, mindlessly, as I clung onto the stars with my eyes. The child that I was drank in the night air, swallowing the elixir and capturing in her soul the magnificence of the world. I collapsed onto the ground, dizzied and breathless, tangled hair framing my young head as I panted. 

Life can be your starlit golf course hidden away at the tip of a dead end street. You can twirl and look up at your stars and remember that your heart is still young and hopeful.  

The Barn: Part 1

The barn stands tall at the tip of our rocky driveway. It's wooden body is cracked beneath the sweltering heat of the summer sun and the black top roof is ablaze. There is not even a chirp of a passing bird or a whisper of wind. All of the Granby farm sits in a pitiful pool of heat and discomfort.

Just inside the barn, within the cool, dark walls of farming days long passed, I squat in my hiding spot. The evil Lord Joseph was prowling the premises, lurking stealthily. I hold my breath, scared that even an exhale would give away my place of refuge.

My ears perk like a cat as a floor board groans just a few steps away from me. I dare to lean over, my hands pressing the floor, my knees scuffing up against the wood.  My eyes dart across the inside of the barn. I can not see the evil Lord Joseph. I lean even further, craning my neck slightly to try and catch a glimpse of his viciously black cape.

"I"VE FOUND YOU!"

A gurgled scream erupts from my throat. Hands grab my shoulders from behind and whip me backwards. The evil Lord found me!

Inspired by Robin

I know exactly where I got my sense of adventure and my love and passion for the "great outdoors" and for life. There was always one person who consistently fostered my eagerness to see more of what was around me and to take the simple joys of life and make them bigger and fuller. That was my dad.

Some would be surprised about that. I know I've grown apart from the man over the years, but my childhood memories are ambushed with the fun I had with my dad. Like every little kid, I thought Dad knew everything. And believe me, he did.

He knew about the plants and animals when we went hiking or exploring.
He knew how to cast a fishing line and how to catch (and cook!) the biggest fish in the lake.
He knew how to get lost on really long drives and somehow find his way back at the right moment, before everyone got too cranky.
He knew how to grill the world's best Sunday barbecue.
He knew how to take apart and rebuild anything--- including the barn out back.
He knew where to find the best donuts and ice cream cones.

It was a Sunday afternoon. The sun was high in the blue sky and there was nothing blocking the shine. The sun dripped down onto the grass, a shine of butter atop the green blades.

"Who wants to go fishing!" Dad stood tall on the back deck, his bronze skin flashing along with the excitement in his voice.

I immediately jumped up from my station on the lawn, "Me! Me!"

"Let's go!" We walked across the street to the Delp's. They owned a bait shop, a Christmas tree farm, and a couple fantastic looking pigs. The bait shop was cool and dark. Several large tubs lined up inside the cave-like building, some with fish, some just with water. There was a refrigerator by the door, a watchful eye to the shop. Dad opened it confidently and made his choice: meal worms.

Dad's truck waited for us in the driveway. I bumbled my way through his work shop, helping as best I could to collect the poles.  My scrawny legs ran to catch up to Dad, who was already piling the bed of the truck with a cooler, his bait box, the meal worms, and the poles.

The lake was a place of mystery. As a child, I didn't know where it was in relation to anything else in the world. It was as if my dad and I collided with a fantasy world that only he and I could see and experience. We found a ledge  that jutted out into the water, a drooping tree offering her trunk to rest up against. I learned  how to hook a worm, cast a line, and reel it back in. My scabby legs and wiry arms were immune to the dirt and worm guts of the afternoon.

I looked up at Dad and toothily grinned as he cast his line out, his deep, playful voice recounting the various fish he's seen in this lake.

The trip would always end faster than I'd want it to. I could have sipped on Coca Cola and cast out that line for hours and hours on end. But, the sun would begin its descent and we would have to head home for dinner.

And although I never caught anything, I got to spend a whole day with my dad, gone fishin'.