Coming Home

My son and wife Laura, and the granddaughter, Shelby are going to be home on the fifth or sixth of January and I will be very happy to see them, it has been three years since I have seen them. The baby was just a few weeks old, then and now she is a wonderful little three year old. I understand from Chase that she has a large vocabulary of dribbles, oozs and auhs (is there such words?). So, I have delayed Christmas till they get here. It is said that Christmas is for children, it will be for me too.
Chase has been to China, Australia, Guam, Midway, Manila,cursed up the China Sea and the Philippines. For a boy from Mitchell County, this is not a bad deal. His grandfather was in China when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He had served with the Asiatic Fleet on the USS Parrot and was one of the few ships that made it to Perth, Australia. Most of the Fleet was of WW1 vintage.
Anyway, I wish you a very good new year and I hope this year will bring you wonderful things.

Carpet of white

My thoughts lately have wondered pass the snow drifts and arctic blast weather. I stayed in yesterday and caught up on some paper work. I imagine the studio is a block of ice this morning and the cat has disowned me for not dispatching his food, so today I have to make the effort and open a can of Special Kitty for his approval.

I haven't written any thing in a couple of weeks. So, my day was brightened by my oldest son Chase calling me and we talked for about an hour. He said he had just got in the day before from a month deployment in the China Sea and a stop in Hong Kong, Philippines, and a base near Kyoto, Japan. He is stationed in Yokosuka (sp), which is about 50 miles south of Tokyo. He says he is a little homesick and can not wait to get back to the states, but Laura, Shelby and he are making the best of it, and have seen most of the sites within a days ride. Laura gets the major responsibility for Shelby and the house, and her own work, but when Chase is home, he says he loves to see his ladies when coming off the ship, he spends as much time as he can playing with Shelby and Laura. Good for them.

You can tell where my thoughts have gone in the bottom picture, I posted above. I didn't get to fish, but once last year and it ended in a very funny story.

Finally on the lake, I had unloaded the boat and actually brought keys for it , this time. Tanks full of fuel, attitude good, bright sunny day, very little wind and the engine starts on the first try, this should have told me that there was more in store than lots of fish in the boat. I trolled the banks going west on the lake up to Snuff's Holler, where I have had some very good fishing. I was just getting ready to plug around the little bay with my brand new Rappala, just out of the box. I got in a little bit of a hurry to make that first cast, and it landed in a big oak, dad would have said that I was squirrel fishing. It had gone through the limbs and was hanging down a few feet and all I had to do was pull it up close to the limbs and give it a real hard pull and it should come out of the leaves and limbs. The plug was a four or five ounce plug which is more weight than I normally use. As it came out of the limbs like firing a high caliber gun, towards me. Now, not having the qualities of a karate master or prize fighter, my reflexes were a little slower than they should be and the treble hook on the tail of the plug gave me the piercing of the right lobe of my ear that I had so wanted for years. Well, with my new ear rings, I could not back it out and keep fishing. I had no wire cutters with me, so I had to go back to the truck.

I tied up at the dock and walked up to the truck, but no wire cutters in the tool box. As I turned to see if some else was around , a fellow was coming up to his truck and I asked him if he had cutters and I had to point out my ornament to explain. I could tell he was having a good deal of fun from this and he reached over on his flat bed, which had just been used to haul manure for his garden and produced side cutters which easily cut the barb off, so I could remove it. Still smiling, my rescuer told the first three people he could find near the dock , my story.

I hope this will brighten your day, So make them good pots and stay warm.