WITTNAUER FESTIVAL-STEINER 45MM-EKTACHROME-ISO 80
... of my earliest memories of pa are of him fishing ... those first recollections are of stops we would make while driving the "hurricane road," the overseas highway connecting the florida mainland to key west ... he'd pull the car off onto a maintenance road on one of the many tiny keys that were connected by the zig-zag path of the 127-miles long bridge ... from there we'd walk back along the edge of the roadway ... i was always frightened, being as back then the right of way was much narrower and the guardrails weren't high enough to prevent a stumbling six-year old from taking a long dive into the sea monster infested aquamarine waters below ... we'd find a spot above a deep channel beneath the structure, and there we would spend an hour or so, me as called for handing him bait, leader lines, hooks, etc., and he existing in a special kind of heaven to which i believe only true fishers ever ascend ... we were usually late getting home, and i always enjoyed the little game he and ma would play out, one in which she never directly asked and he never told an actual lie ...
... in the picture above pa is fishing at king salmon, alaska, probably sometime in 1959 ... funny, now, how then i'd watch him, hoping with all my being that some day i, too, would have real man arms like his ... and ... and there's the memory of asking him, "how come you never get upset when you don't catch anything" ...
... "i'll figure today was the fish's turn, and besides, it just means i'll have to go fishin' again" ...
... in the picture above pa is fishing at king salmon, alaska, probably sometime in 1959 ... funny, now, how then i'd watch him, hoping with all my being that some day i, too, would have real man arms like his ... and ... and there's the memory of asking him, "how come you never get upset when you don't catch anything" ...
... "i'll figure today was the fish's turn, and besides, it just means i'll have to go fishin' again" ...