I have a notebook that I have labeled with the topics for the year and when I get an idea: I jot it down with enough notes to prompt the story I want to tell. It helps. It helps a lot. Because being creative under pressure, well it doesn’t work for me. My plants page was empty, might be why May didn’t go so well. Anyway, trying to refocus for June in both writing and writing down nuggets of ideas. If you don’t have a notebook, I do suggest you get one and dedicate it to the process. It does help if you use it.
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I have no idea how long my paternal grandparents went to Wisconsin to fish in the summer June-ish) for one to two weeks. I wonder if they went as young parents with a young son and how they even found the spot. I know they had it down to a science; what to take, what could stay home. I am pretty sure my mother went up there early in their dating/marriage. It was one of those things you never questioned, just something that was.
Bluegill was the main fish to be fished. I can remember going with my grandfather and fly fishing one year. Wow they were biting. I told him if it was always like this, I wouldn’t mind going fishing. He laughed. He had a great laugh. Many, many meals of fried (lightly breaded in flour and thrown in a frying pan of oil) bluegill were eaten.
The thing was every so often a much bigger fish was caught and then everyone had to pose with said fish. To the point that if you look on the back of the pictures, you have no idea who actually caught the fish, it was more a slide show of who was on the trip. Pretty sure there are pictures somewhere of my parents holding the same fish as below.
A story told to me often was on a trip where I got to go along (maybe my first one) and at nap time my grandfather said he would watch me. And then promptly snuggled down beside me and fell asleep. I probably slept a tad but then got up and found my crayons, which would have been ok, but I did not find the paper, so I used a wall. You could still hear the anger in my mom’s voice many years later of the necessity of her to scrub the walls in the cabin because my grandfather fell asleep. When he was reminded of the story, he would smile and wink at me, pretty sure he found the whole thing quite funny.
With no tv (and the internet not existing at this time) there was much to read and card games to play. (or watch play, even then I was not a huge card playing person).
My aunt and her husband continued the tradition until just last year with their family. It was the last year for the “resort” as it was being sold and the couple that ran it was retiring. I bet she has some fabulous memories of it also. I remember most the smell of fried blue gill, talking into the many box fans that were going to cool it off, having them save milk cartons prior to put the cleaned fish in with water and freeze for the trip back home (and fish eating in the fall) and getting my very first leach on my foot (gah!).
kkdonk 