Happiest Memory - by Dad

June 24, 2012

My happiest childhood memory – well, it is hard to know when I stopped being a child. What keeps coming to my mind is a sweet memory of my dad taking me fishing when I was a little kid – I suppose I was 8 or 10 years old – down at the north fields near Heber..  Now there was a little creek below Grandpa McDonald’s (my grandpa, not yours) barn. I believe it was called the “London Ditch” after the barn which was called the “Londonderry Farm”. So it was my first time fishing and the first time my dad had taken me. I guess Stanton, who was 2 years younger than I,  wasn’t old enough. So it was just me and my dad. He showed me how to put the worm on the hook (of course he did it for me} and how to gently toss the line in the water so as not to shake the worm off and let it drift into the bank with the current.  Well we had fished for about half an hour, which seemed like an eternity to me, and my dad asked me if I wanted to catch a fish. Well at first I wasn’t sure what he meant, but he said he was getting a nibble on his bait and he thought he would be catching a fish shortly and wondered if I would like to catch the fish with his pole and line. Well, I was a little too proud, I guess,  to catch my dad’s fish even though  he really wanted me to, so I said no,  I wanted to wait and catch my own fish. Well, sure enough he reeled in a nice rainbow trout a few minutes later. I didn’t catch anything that night and I think we went home with one fish. But more important I realized that my dad would have liked to let me catch his fish and that he loved me enough to want me to have the experience and thrill of catching one, and that he loved me. I guess learning that my dad loved me was my happiest childhood memory. And I miss him even though he’s been gone 19 years. We fished occasionally after that, but no other fishing trip was quite as special.

Love,

Dad