Now in the latter years of my life, I’ve developed a hatred for summers and the high temperatures that come with it. No longer do I look forward those hot summer days the same way I did as a youth.
But today we’re going to turn back the clock on what was one of the best periods of my life.
Growing up in my house, there was no such thing as “sleeping in.” Pretty much every day of my life the light switch was turned on in my room no later than 6:30 in the morning. Growing up on a ranch in East Texas was a great privilege of mine and it taught me so much about hard work and responsibility.
But it was also my playground for hunting and fishing and is where my passion for the outdoors started. I literally spent hours and days transversing the woods and stock ponds of our ranch. This is where I learned to hunt squirrels and deer while our stock ponds were loaded with bass and catfish, my training ground for fishing.
Directly across the street from our house, a few miles out of town, was the property of Mr. Rayford Jones who was a cattle rancher with a couple of really good catfish ponds. This is where a good friend of mine (Malcolm Jones, Rayford’s grandson) and I spent the majority of those hot summer days fishing for catfish.
Since we did not have cell phones back in those days, we would make arrangements the night before to meet at the one of those catfish ponds just after daylight. We tried to beat the heat by getting out there early but most often we were there until around noon or until we got tired of catching fish.
The worst part about catching catfish was that someone had to clean them, and it didn’t take long for us to make the decision to just enjoy catching and releasing the catfish back into the pond so we could catch them again on another day — or you could say, we were just lazy.
One thing about fishing for catfish: it requires much patience, but is a fun way to fish. In order to catch catfish, you need bait. Now bait can be in the form of several different things, as catfish will eat just about anything including the kitchen sink…. but that’s hard to get on a hook. Some people use what is known as blood bait, which is not only nasty, but stinks to high heaven as well. Frozen shrimp also make great catfish bait along with hot dogs and earthworms.
We liked to double our fun by using what is known as cut bait. You first catch a few small bream with crickets or earthworms and then cut the tails off and use that for bait. Every now and then, we had so much fun catching the bream, we would just forget about the catfish.
I’ve often wondered — is it hotter today than when were kids? Probably not, but we were just acclimated to the heat better since we spent every waking hour outdoors and not inside an air-conditioned house. Our parents insisted we stay outside even if we were thirsty. Thank the Lord for whoever invented the garden hose, because this was a survival tool for kids of my generation.
Shade trees were not just a part of our front yard, they were a gathering spot to get some relief from the summer sun. The only thing better than a shade tree was a fruit tree. There were several pear and apple trees in the area along with a couple of fig trees — all used for survival. A lot of people back during the 1960s and ‘70s planted fruit trees, something you don’t see much any more.
I miss thpse days. I really enjoyed growing up the way I did. If we weren’t fishing, we were playing baseball on a sandlot or any backyard we could find. Yes, there were a few broken windows, but our sandlot games were fun and a great training ground for developing our baseball skills. If was too hot to play baseball, we went to the local swimming pool in order to beat the heat.
I know it was a different time, but back then we had freedom and the ability to go wherever our bikes could takes us. We did not need or have much favor towards babysitters. We also never complained about it being too hot. We beat it with a Wham-O Water Wiggle or a Slip-N-Slide.
‘Til next time, good luck, good fishing and make sure to wear your sunscreen. Melanoma is the No. 1 killer of all cancers so take the time to protect yourself.
Contact Steve at sgraf26@yahoo.com