#1 – The Shovel is an amazing tool (aka – don’t forget to
ask for help, dummy)
This summer, I dug a very big hole. Well, a trench is more like it. It was 150 feet long, four feet tall and
three feet wide. I dug it out, one
shovel full at a time. My neighbors thought
that I was putting in a moat. A moat
certainly would be cool (I’m sure my kids and dog would love it), but the real
purpose of the trench was to replace a struggling retaining wall. As dirt piled high above my backyard grass,
hours turned into days, and days into weeks.
People would often stop on the street and gawk as I threw rocky fill
over my shoulder. As the massive excavation
finally came to a close, I stood above the scene, admiring that my backyard
resembled a warzone. Feeling proud of
the muscles that I had developed and confident that my man-made trench would
surely impress, I displayed my new gully to various friends that stopped by for
the standard inspection.
Friend, “Nice trench.”
Me, smiling proud, “Thanks! Two months of digging.”
Friend, “That’s a lot of digging.”
Me, still proud, “It’s amazing what one can do with a simple shovel.”
Me, still proud, “It’s amazing what one can do with a simple shovel.”
Friend, “You know, I could have come over with my backhoe
and we could have pounded that out in an afternoon.”
Me, balloon completely deflated, “Oh… I, uh…
uh… Thanks.”
#2 – Don’t Take My Son Fishing
I take pride in the fact that both my ten-year-old daughter,
Ella, and my twelve-year-old son, Sam, can work a fishing pole better than
most of my adult friends. They have
grown up casting Rooster Tails in the calm lakes of Northeastern Washington,
dropping walleye jigs in the deep water of the Columbia, and have even landed
their share of salmon and cod in the icy waters of Alaska. As cool as these experiences have been to
share between father and child, I believe that it is now time to release my son
to his own fishing devices. No longer
will I bait his hook, clean his catch, or untangle his rats-nest. That’s what he gets for out-fishing his
father.
Catch record stats from a recent fishing excursion with Sam,
Nick and I:
Sam – 7 walleye (one so big, it broke the pole), 1 rainbow
trout, 1 pike
Nick – 1 walleye
Me – Nothing
It got to the point that every time my son yelled, “Fish On!"
I cursed a little. My friend, Nick,
contemplated pushing Sam into the river.
From this moment on, my son is on his own. Let’s see him out-fish me now, as he
scrambles to master his fishing knots, unhook his snagged line, and climb up
onto shore after being shoved into the water.
#3 – Drive, Don’t Fly
I only needed to go to Portland, Oregon. From my house, that’s about a seven hour
drive - No big deal, right? But after
finding a plane ticket out of Spokane that was cheaper than three tanks of gas,
I figured, “what the heck.” I would fly
in on the early plane and be dropping the crab pots on the coast by 9am. Since it was such an early flight out on
Thursday, I decided to drive down to Deer Park the night before to stay with my
in-laws in order to save an hour of morning sleep.
10pm Thursday – text from the airlines “Your 6am flight has
been canceled. You are rescheduled on
the noon plane.” Crap! Well, there goes the morning crabbing trip.
10am Friday – I was in the Spokane area with time to
kill. I stop at my favorite cigar shop
and splurge. I buy one really nice,
really expensive, hand rolled Maduro.
What the heck – I’m on vacation, right?
11:30am – At the airport trying to get my new boarding pass,
the ticket agent informs me that my noon flight has been canceled, and I have
been rescheduled on the 4pm plane. Crap!
Noon – I am hungry.
With my truck already secured in the Park’n’Fly lot, my only lunch
options are through security. After
being probed, I sit down and order a cheese and basil pizza. It cost $11 and it was about four inches in
diameter. It tasted like a post-it
note. I was still hungry. I like to eat vegetarian, but my options were
limited. I ordered boneless hot wings. There were six small ones and they tasted like
croutons doused in Tabasco. With tip, I
spent $30 on the worst lunch in recent memory.
Crap!
1:30pm – I am bored.
My hand rolled Maduro comes to mind.
I could easily kill an hour enjoying that bad-boy. Back out through security and across the main drive. I find a bench seat out of the way and
extract my expensive cigar. After
unwrapping it and biting off the end, I realize, due to airport security, I don’t
have any matches. Feeling like a common
street thug, I walk up to strangers asking, “Do you have a light?” Several rejections and a few nervous parents
later, I bum a lighter off of an off-duty stewardess. A sudden increase in wind velocity made cigar
ignition a little challenging, but darn it, I got that expensive smoke
lit. Three puffs into it, I see the
thunderstorm closing in fast.
Crap!
Crap!
Mink Island is
available as a download at:
Barnes & Noble http://bit.ly/BNminkisland
Smashwords http://bit.ly/minksmash
Also on iBooks, Kobo and Oyster
No comments:
Post a Comment