My dad passed away a couple weeks ago. We’re still trying to wrap our heads around dealing with “stuff” and suddenly it hit me: I don’t have anyone to go fishing with when I get off work. My fishing buddy is gone.
Now mind you, I’m a bookkeeper at FLW so I don’t get home until around 5:30 p.m. My dad was 81 and has lived with us the past year after a small stroke. Up until now, I could call him and tell him, “We’re gonna drown some worms when I got home,” and he’d be sitting on our front porch waiting for me when I drove up. I kept the fishing poles and tackle box in our car so we could just zip on out and head to the lake. All we needed were some juicy night crawlers and a couple bottles of water – maybe some packaged crackers if he had thrown them in a bag. Fishing was more important than dinner.
We fished off the bank at several special spots that he could get to and spend a few hours just feeding the fish as we never really caught much … rarely anything “keep-able.” Even if we did catch a keeper, we’d hang onto it for a while and then let it loose as neither of us wanted to clean just one or two.
We enjoyed many an evening sitting in the lawn chairs, baiting and re-baiting, teasing each other with the gold-fished size whoppers we’d land and lament about those dang turtles robbing us once again. Often we didn’t talk much and other times it was like we hadn’t seen each other for weeks. Oh how I will miss those evenings.
If my husband was home, we’d take dad fishing on the pontoon. We got it where he could get on and off with ease as we knew he couldn’t get into a regular fishing boat. We’d load up with baits and food to barbeque later in the day when we needed a break from fishing. Dad always fished off the left side of the pontoon unless my husband was getting nibbles on the other side. Then, slyly, dad would toss his line over there and say “oops” and cackle with laughter … especially when he caught something in just a short time. The last time we took dad fishing was just a few weeks ago. He was the only one to catch anything at all and enjoyed hooting his victory to everyone over the next week. I’m glad I got pictures of his big grin holding his catch as normally we didn’t capture the moment so to speak.
So if you are fishing on Kentucky Lake around the dam and see a lonely woman fishing on the bank with tears flowing, it’s just me enjoying my memories of dad.
Lisa Lenear has been a bookkeeper with FLW since 1993.
Her dad was Edward G. Milton. He passed away July 20, 2013.