Just about a quarter of a mile past the old home place there is a crossroad. As anyone might guess, it’s made of the same questionable mixture of clay and that good old Florida sand. Questionable because when we have some heavy rains, which is almost every day in the summer time, it becomes next to impossible to drive on this slippery stuff. Such as this is what we call a dirt road in The sunshine State.
 One bright and sunny morning when we were in our early teens, My friend Joe and I decided to try out a new fishing hole we’d discovered way back in the woods about a mile or so to the south of that crossroad. We rode Joe’s bicycle as far as we could, then had to walk, carrying our meager supply of fishing gear down to the water’s edge.
 Each of us had a cane pole and a supply of line and hooks along with some big chunks of chicken meat of different shapes and sizes. This from Mom, Who said it was just waste and had to be thrown away anyhow, so we were welcome to it.
 Imagine the excitement when almost instantly after hitting the water, the bait was taken with what felt like a mighty jerk and a heave on the line! “Wow, Joe! Look at that pole bend! It’s gotta be a five or six pounder at least”.
 ”Yeah I know”, Joe yelled back, “Same thing here! I’ve got a monster!”

We pulled and yelled instructions to each other like “Take it easy”, and “Don’t break your line!” and “Don’t let your pole bend so much, it’ll break”.

 When we finally got our “monsters” up on shore, they turned out to be soft shelled, or snappiing turtles. What a catch! These things probably weighed in at about four or five pounds each. But of course we had no way to be sure, but we were very good at guessing, as is true with most boys at that age.

 Turtles! We soon tired of catching them one at a time on those limber, fragile cane poles, so we found some good sized small branches that had fallen from the trees and shoved them deeply into the soft earth on the shore. Then we unwound enough line to reach far enough out into the water and tied one end of the line to the stake in the ground, added a hook and a chunk of bait to the other, and tossed  it out!
 This was so much better for hauling in those turtles than the flimsy cane poles, we repeated this process three times for each of us. Now we had six lines, all being constantly attacked by turtles and keeping the two of us working furiously trying to keep up with them.
 It was another job to put these mean things on a stringer without getting bit. Soft shelled turtles have very strong muscles, especially in their jaws. I am living proof, for I still bear scars from some of those bites. I had to do all the stringing because Joe didn’t want to get bit! Well, I didn’t’ want to either, but somebody had to do it.
 As early afternoon approached, so did the usual thunderstorm! “We Better get outta here.” I told Joe when I noticed the dark, angry looking clouds beginning to build way off in the west and moving toward us. “Guess you’re right”, he said, “It’s gonna be a long way home haulin’ all these turtles’.
 When we finally got things all cleaned up and started on our way, it was slow going through those woods with poor Joe having to manhandle thirty six turtles that he was afraid would bite him while I struggled on my crutches with all of our gear and two cane poles. So he was dragging the things instead of trying to carry them.
That was probably just as well, for that many of them at a good guess averaged three to four pounds each is a lot for a twelve or thirteen year old boy to carry, even if he is in great shape.
 We finally made  it back to the road and managed to tie all those turtles onto the bike just before it started raining. Not the sort of rain people talk about in poems and love songs, either! This stuff was coming down in buckets! And hard! It stings mightily on exposed skin and even a little through your shirt.
 Bicycle tires are skinny little things when you try to push the bike through that old clay mud that can create a suction that’ll pull your shoes right off your feet when you try to walk in it. And we had at least a hundred and twenty five pounds of turtles on this one.
 Poor Joe, I felt bad for him, but I wasn’t doing any better myself. Those crutches sank in the mud so deep, when I’d pull them out, my feet would sink! Talk about slow going! I didn’t think I’d ever seen it rain so hard in my life. And it didn’t look like it was going to let up any time soon. So on we trudged toward home as slow as a couple of overloaded snails. But about halfway home, the rain eased off and eventually stopped altogether just before we got there.
 We struggled and slipped and slid through that mess till we finally made it back to my house where Mom took one look and said,”Look at you two! You are not bringing that muddy mess in my house, You might as well go on out back and hose it off.”
 ”And just what are you planning to do with all these turtles”, she asked.
“We want to have some for supper”, I told her. “You’ll not have any at all if you expect ME to clean ‘em”, She shot back.:You boys get ‘em cleaned, and I’ll fry all you want, but no cleaning for me”
 If you knew my mother, you’d instantly know that there was no use arguing anytime she used that many words to say something. So, out back we went and hosed each other down to get rid of most of the mud and start learning how to clean soft shelled turtles. Hard lessons, too they were! No wonder Mom made such a fuss! Those things are a hundred times harder to clean than any other kind of meat I’d ever done before.
 But I have to say that it was all well worth what we went through to bring home the catch that day. Everybody congratulated us for a fine job, and Mom got compliments on such a wonderful meal she made for us all. And there was even enough turtle that Mom wrapped up the rest for Joe to take home to his family.
 How I’d love to go fishing in that little pond just one more time with that old friend whom I know now that I’ll never see again.

 Those were the days!!