Instead of sitting home and "writing", this afternoon I went out with my sister and brother-in-law in their boat.
It's the Tackle Time tournament here and the goal is to catch the biggest fish.
We've lived on the water all our lives but until last summer, I hadn't been out fishing since I was a young girl.
I don't like to handle bait so my nephew or my brother-in-law have to bait my hook and my casting abilities are rusty.
I don't know all the rod and reel jargon but there is a lot going on when you have to cast your line out.
You have to keep your thumb on the spool once you release the...the thingy while you gracefully arc the rod over your shoulder, releasing enough line but still controlling the amount of line leaving the spool.
I had a really good reel and it had some super fast bearings. I would fling that line out and fail to control the spool causing backlash -or as my brother-in-law called it, professional overrun.
I spent more time trying to work out the backlash than I did actually fishing but finally I got pissed off at myself and decided that I was going to repeatedly cast that son of a bitch out until I got it right. And I did.
I was the first person to catch a fish. It was a large croaker but since there isn't an adult catagory for croakers, we threw it back. I later caught a small gafftop. We threw him back too.
There is something so amazing about sitting in a boat, floating on the water watching the clouds drift by, watching the pelicans dive head first searching for fish.
For a moment life was really peaceful and almost perfect.
Then my nephew turned on the radio and all it would pick up was a station playing a Kenny Rogers song.
The argument started over whether or not Kenny Rogers was called the Silver Fox.
My sister insisted that was his nickname. I said I didn't believe anyone had ever called him that.
My brother-in-law said, "No. Conway Twitty was the Silver Fox."
"What? No way! Conway Twitty had hair as black as shoe polish. No one called him the Silver Fox either!" I said.
We all sat in silence for a few minutes and for some reason I felt like I needed to say, "You know who the Velvet Fog is?"
No, no one knew.
"It's Mel Torme, you idiots!"
"Is that Marisa Tomei's father?" My sister asked.
I blinked a few times, opened my mouth to say something, stopped and opened my mouth again...
"Yes, yes, Marisa Tomei's father is the Velvet Fog."
I went back to watching the pelicans.
Posted by De at June 24, 2006 10:50 PM | TrackBack