My childhood was great. I was a generally happy kid. I got my fair share of beats from the father, but most of the time, things were good.
When you are a kid, you live for the summer. The last day of school is always party day, and then you run out after the last bell, a huge smile on your face, ready to face the next two months of pure awesome-ness.

Summers were my life. In fact they still are. I spend a lot of time with my family during summer, because everyone is so busy with school the rest of the year. So me, my brother and cousins are always off on wild adventures. When we were younger, it was always FISHING.

Every year, me and my dad would water the backyard lawn, and then hunt for worms in the night. I was never scared of those wiggly bastards. My brother was. :P So we filled a few containers, because my dad was too cheap for pay for bait.

In the morning, we would wake up at about 4, and pack the minivan. We would head over the “meeting place”, where our other family and friends would be waiting for the 2 hour drive together into the country. Me and my brother would play this game while driving in the rural roads. We would look for road kill, and who ever found the most won. It was a cruel and unusual game.
Eventually, we would reach our destination...an empty path in the road. My dad and the other 5 vans would turn somewhere, and drive through this forest. There was literally no path or anything. Just lots of plants. They would park their vans nowhere in particular, and then we all got off, took our packs, rods, tackle boxes, and food, and then walked through this field of corn.

Yeah. We were trespassing on a farming field. It was quite the walk. Depending on how late in the summer we went, the corn was either not grown yet, or so high that I couldn’t get through. My dad would then give me a piggyback the entire way.

After walking for about 5-10 minutes through the field, we got to a “hole”. It was really just this space between trees we had to squeeze through, and then we would finally be at the fishing spot. It was just a nice place right by the river. I remember there being this huge fallen over tree that we would always sit on, and a nice fire pit that we left behind every year. Then the big boys would get everything set up to fish, the ladies would give everyone food, and the kids (my cousins, brother, and I) would fool around the rest of the day.

Sometimes we got to fish. It really was them casting the line, and us holding the rod until a fish bit. We then would reel it in, and someone would get it out of the water. God was that fun.

Sometimes, I went through our tackle box, and took out a fake worm. I would run around with it and scare my mom and my aunts. Then my dad and uncles would yell at them for scaring the fish with their screams. Teehee.

One year, a snapping turtle swam up shore. It was the biggest muthah-fuckah I ever saw. One of my uncles took a huge branch and put it in front of it, and it snapped it clean in two. A bunch of them had to eventually pick the thing up and get it back into the water. It was pretty scary :S

Eventually, it would get too hot to fish. We would pack up and do the whole process in reverse. The road kill game wasn’t fun on the way back though, because there were usually more cars driving.

When we got home, my parents would clean and gut the fish in our backyard because doing it inside would REALLY stink. Then at night, it was fish for dinner. Boy did I love fish.



Until I became a vegetarian.