One Sunday morning, we woke up and went down to the dock to take the pontoon boat to get the morning paper which was a Lake Hickory ritual that had been performed every Sunday morning that my family spent at the lake since the beginning of time. It was a beautiful morning and the marina was about a 20 minute ride which we enjoyed as usual. On the way back the 35 horse Evenrude suddenly stopped. My dad at the time sold boats and growing up on a farm has always worked on his own equipment. So off comes the cover and he is on his hands and knees working on the motor. Now 7 year old boys do not have an extremely long attention span so I was done with the motor in about 5 seconds and looking for something else to do. My mom handed me a rod with a silver Daredevil Spoon on it and I proceeded to fish. The attention span being what it is and the fact that casting a spoon is a lot of work as well as boring the fishing sort of retrograded to me dangling the spoon over the side in about 15 feet of water and "jigging" as the boat drifted along. The thing I did not realize at the time was that each time I "jigged" I was tapping the aluminum rail of the pontoon boat. Metal being what it is and possessing the properties it has, transmits sound very well. My poor father, on his hands and knees, sweating heavily, bent over working on the motor, hearing the constant tap, tap, tap of my rod finally lost it. Three things occured at the same time. He yelled my name which caused me to jump, (you know that moment of time when it all comes together and you realize that you are totally aware of your surroundings, time slows, you are doing something stupid and you are suddenly aware that you are about to hurt yourself, someone else or be hurt by someone)He raised up quickly and smacked his head on the railing (I knew I was dead at that point)and (the only thing that saved me) a 5 Lb bass that must have been contemplating the spoon grabbed it just as I jerked. My dad did a complete 360 when the drag on that reel started singing. As soon as he realized I had a fish on he forgot all about the motor, the tapping and the headache. We boated the fish, he got the motor running and we went home and had fresh fish for lunch. My mother never said a word but she just gave me a look and I knew how close I had been to having a very unplesant morning. Needless to say I didn't miss church for a while after that and mom would always fondly remember that morning and get that sly little smile everytime she thought about that fish.

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