La Crescent, Minnesota is a beautiful hilly town with fragrant apple orchards on one side and the mighty Mississippi River on the other. La Crescent was home for a few years in my early childhood, and it was there that Dad taught me how to fish.  Even as a four year old, I felt big when I was in the boat with Dad.  The river was an exciting place for me, with big barges going up and down the channel, and sometimes we would go over and fish near the Lock 7 dam and watch boats go through the lock.

We moved to Clarksville, Tennessee when I was seven.  Spring and summer in Tennessee were seasons of leather baseball mitts and ground balls in the freshly cut grass; lightning bugs and starlit nights and camping out in a tent in the backyard; and getting up early on occasional Saturday mornings and driving in the dark to Lake Barkley or Kentucky Lake, aiming to get there and be out on the water at the crack of dawn.

There was something magical about sitting in a boat with Dad, not uttering a sound, and listening to the mourning doves and bobwhites off in the distance.  I loved picking out a spot near shore, or along the edge of lily pads and weedy areas where that big lunker might just be waiting, and casting my lure or bait.  When that fish makes a reel hum as the line races out, bending the pole nearly in half, it’s a thrill that’s hard to match anywhere else.

Sometimes we would catch our limit; other times we’d come home empty.  It really didn’t matter.  The joy was in the process, the joy was in the time spent with Dad out on the water.

We didn’t fish every weekend or even every other weekend, but we fished often enough that I don’t remember details about each trip and some of the stuff I remember is blurred together as I think back on it.  One day that I’ll always remember clearly, though, was a Saturday morning in mid April of 1970.

Early in the morning, maybe 4:30am, Dad gently woke me up and said, “Let’s go.”  I knew instantly that he wanted to go fishing.  I hopped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and we were out the door within ten minutes.  Dad had already loaded up the car with our poles and fishing tackle.  We went in our ‘68 white Olds Cutlass station wagon, towing the trailer and boat behind us.