Good Times

I have a week of vacation next week. I’m going to take Jones and Georgia camping one night and then Nathan is coming down to spend a few days camping and fishing with me. Preparing for this upcoming adventure has been reminding me of some of my fondest memories of growing up.
My dad’s side of the family has always enjoyed camping and fishing, and when I was 9 or 10 years old we started a tradition of spending the last week of June at the lake, usually Lake Amistad, on the Texas-Mexican border. My granddaddy, dad and I, my uncles and cousins would spend a week in the Texas heat with no air conditioning, trotlining for catfish and making memories.

I remember seeing my granddaddy’s pick-up pulling into the campground loaded down with all of his gear, a 14 ft Lonestar Boat tied to the top, and pulling his camping trailer.
I remember my dad hauling his 2-man buster boat and our other camping gear in the horse trailer one year.
I remember the year Dad got a boat from my great-grandparents (it’s now my boat, the Versie P) and how fast I thought it was with that 20 horse power Johnson that could outrun my granddaddy’s 12 horse Sea King.
I remember the year I got my first kayak and set and ran my own trotlines.
I remember seining for perch to use on our yellow cat lines.
I remember granddaddy whopping needle nose gar with the boat paddle until the beaks broke and they came off the line. You don’t want one of those things in the boat with you. We never kept carp or drum either, but I remember granddaddy offering them to any black folks that were around because, “They like to eat ‘em.” I still do the same thing, and they are usually accepted with gratitude.
We kept all of our fish in a 3 ft cube steel cage that my granddaddy had built. That way we only had to clean fish a couple of times, once during the week and once just before we went home. Granddaddy was the fastest. He could clean three or four in the time it took me to do one.

I even remember what we ate. My grandmother would send a big batch of Wheatie cookies in a big tin. They would be gone before the week was out. I remember steak night, hamburger night, and fish fry night. I remember the smell of percolated coffee in the mornings with scrambled eggs that were too runny for my taste and biscuits that were burnt on the bottoms and barely done on the tops. My theory is that granddaddy wouldn’t let the his propane oven pre-heat before he put the biscuits in so all of the heat was on the bottom side while the pan blocked the heat from radiating up to the top of the oven. Lunches were leftovers from the night before or sandwiches. Have you ever had a potted meat sandwich?

I remember the windshield I busted out of a ski boat that was parked too close to where my cousin and I were skipping rocks.
I remember some days wishing for a breeze to alleviate some of the heat and other days cursing the wind for making the lake too rough.
Man, was it hot. I remember going into Del Rio on hot afternoons for a chance to “ride in the cool”.
Before bedtime we’d all get our soap and towels and head down to the water for our bath. It was for cooling off purposes more than it was to wash the Catfish Charlie Blood Bait B smell off of our hands. No matter how hard you scrub, that smell doesn’t wash off. It has to wear off.
I remember going to sleep listening to my dad, granddaddy, and uncles talking and telling “Remember that time…” stories.
I remember the summer after my freshman year of college as the first year that I didn’t get to make the trip because I spent the summer working at Pine Springs and the regret I felt about not being there.
I remember when Bro. John started coming along a few years later, and the first time we had females in the camp when mom and Sheila came over for fish fry night at Lake Ivie one year.

The last Last Week of June trip I made was the week before I got married in 2003. I catfish with jugs instead of trotlines these days. I use a throw net instead of a seine to catch bait, and when I can catch it I use shad for bait instead of Catfish Charlie. I clean fish with an electric filet knife instead of a pocket knife and skinning pliers.
But some things remain the same. I’m still camping and fishing. The Versie P is still in the family and still catches fish, I still whop gar with the boat paddle, and I even bought some potted meat the other day.