Launch Site

It's time to get out on the water and try some flyfishing. I do this as much to honor my Dad as to be fishing. It was among the many things we shared.

This is the season to test for the coming hatch. My Dad taught me to get to the water early and to develop my " targeting skills " with the flyrod. He would take a bicycle innertube and float it out to the desired distance and have me cast the fly to the middle of the circle. Although he had a tether tied to the tube, he let it drift to allow for a moving target.

Dad was quite a guy and probably the best flyfisherman I have ever known. He was patient and supportive in his instruction. And his sense of humor made my mistakes just another part of the learning experience. I miss him every day.

He would have enjoyed the kayak, as I do, and would have been absorbed in the Nature all around him from this new perspective.

more from Grady Creek Holler

Goin' to Church


The more he rode that boney mule while favoring that swole-up foot, the more he talked to the Lord. Grisham would talk to the Lord whenever it came on him to do so, but he wasn't for goin' to church meetin's. Reason why was, he was once hounded in to goin' to the little church, two hollers over. His woman had stayed on him about it since she smelled the corn liquor on him after a coon huntin' episode involvin' a couple of the other holler dwellers there about.

So he dug out a rag of a tie, left over from his dead uncle's best clothes, put on clean overalls and his best hat and headed down to the Church of the Open Door, two hollers over. She told him the night before that he better be " gettin' ready to go ".

He walked the long way down to the gravel road until he came to the church and heard the singin'. He dawdled around outside as long as he could then took off his hat and ducked on in.

There was folks from all over in there and everyone of them seemed to turn around and look at him when the big door creaked open and he stepped in. Lord! What a terrible embarrassment! But the worse was yet to come 'cause he no sooner stepped in than he saw that they was passin' a plate along and people was puttin' money in the plate.

Now he, bein' tight on money in the first place and not havin' any with him in the second, found hisself in a terrible fix. So, he backed on out and made off back up into them hills never to return. Hell, he thought, I never knowed they was going to charge to get in.

Lordy, Lordy! What a terrible embarrassment he had suffered. He spent all day getting ready and traveling there and ain't heard a word of preaching after all. At least he could tell the old woman that he went …. he did. And he wouldn't mention the embarrassment nor the shame it had inflicted on him. He had too much stiff to his backbone to tell that.
When she asked if he saw so-in-so at the service he could say yes, or at least " I'm right sure they seen me". And that would fix that.

Now that was all way before Bessie May saw Jesus, down at the spring.