Fishing

My dad used to take me fishing. We had little lakes everywhere in Michigan — that’s one of the great things about growing up there. We usually went to Van Auken Lake, which was about halfway between Hartford and Bangor. It was small and pretty shallow, so it was a good place to go swimming or fishing.

PHOTO: My dad

We had a rowboat. It might have been aluminum, but it seems like I remember that it was a good old-fashioned wooden rowboat. My dad taught me how to row a boat, which is something I don’t think many kids know how to do nowadays.

PHOTO: Me

We usually used cane fishing poles. I’m pretty sure my dad would bait the hook for me. I wasn’t afraid of worms, though. In fact, I had a little friend who used to come to my house after it rained and we would collect earthworms that came up out of the ground after the rain, to use as fishing bait. 

PHOTO: Ricky

One time when I was fishing with my dad, I caught something that wasn’t a fish — it was a rod & reel. Just a small one, in fact, just the right size for a kid like me to use. So that was my fishing pole from then on.

According to my baby book, I caught 10 fish the day these pictures were taken!