In honor of Father’s Day, I thought I would write something about my father like I did on Memorial Day. My brother and I were lucky enough to have a father who was always there and took an interest in us. Though I don’t remember him every saying, “I love you.” He showed his love through his actions. He took us fishing and camping, coached our little league baseball team, and was the leader of our Cub Scout troop. He worked hard to support our family, and I think one of the best gifts he gave me is a strong work ethic. Unfortunately, my father died of cancer in 1992 just before his sixty-second birthday. One of the hardest days I have ever experienced was when he sat with me and my brother and asked us to take care of my mom when he was gone. (I am trying to write this with tears in my eyes.) But, I do not want to focus on the sadness of losing him. I want to focus on the happiness of spending time with my father.
My parents were from Missouri and almost every year we would load up the car and make the thirteen-hour trip from Colorado to Missouri. We would often spend the evening at my aunt and uncle’s house with others from my dad’s side of the family, and they would all reminisce with a lot of fish stories. Even though they told the same stories every year, I never got tired of hearing them. As I got older and spent more time fishing with my dad, and uncle when we were in Missouri, I experienced my own fish stories. Some of these are told occasionally at my own family’s gatherings. One of my favorites occurred when my father and I were fishing a small lake on the eastern plains of Colorado with a couple of his buddies. I don’t even remember how many fish we caught that day. The lake was shallow and my dad waded out in front of the rock face of the earthen dam to get his line into deeper water. When he was done there he turned and started wading back to the bank but stopped because he saw a snake coiled up in the rocks where he planned to get out. He could not tell if the coiled snake was a rattlesnake or a bull snake so he poked the snake with the end of his eight-foot fishing rod. The snake turned out to be a bull snake which can be very cantankerous. Dad’s poking infuriated the snake that came out of the rock swimming after my dad. It was hilarious for us watching my dad trying to wade backward in the thigh-deep water thrashing at the pursuing snake. Of course, the snake was only around three feet from him and he had an eight-foot-long fishing pole so he didn’t have much luck actually striking the snake, but did do a good job of keeping it angry. He was eventually able to wade back to the bank where the unfortunate bull snake met his demise.
Another favorite, though not funny, was April Fool’s Day in 1967. My dad and I went fishing one of our favorite sections on the Platte River, Eleven Mile Canyon. After I got old enough to drive we would often ‘tag team’ with one of us getting out to fish and the other driving the truck down to the next pull out. When the one that was let out got to the truck, he would drive it down to the next spot, and we would go down the length of the canyon. On this particular day, I was let out and was fishing down. When I got near where I thought the truck would be parked I looked up and saw a lot of cars parked there with people standing on the side of the road. I climbed up to the road and as I walked down around a curve in the road I heard a yell and looked across the river to see my dad holding a huge trout. It was an eleven pound six pounce brown trout that my dad had mounted. It still hangs on my home office wall along with the smaller rainbow trout I caught a couple years later. These are only a couple of the myriad of stories but I hope they give you a sense of joy I got fishing with my dad.
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