I don't fish.

On a family fishing trip I crept too close to the rushing creek. Now, some sixty-odd years later, I am alive only because Daddy could run faster than water. As he ran, he periodically threw his lanky frame down upon the soggy bank - pressing his chest against the mud so he could stretch his extra-long airplane mechanic arms down into the opaque water to fiercely claw up any fragments that felt promising.

Tree roots, clods of clay and slimy branches littered daddy's determined path as he worked hair-on-fire down the bulging creek.

Onlookers agonized that his efforts were only a pitiful heartbreaking futility. But, at last, in one great swoop, he caught something that turned out to be my hair, and by those strands flung my gasping flailing self onto the grassy bank, kinda like a bear does a salmon.

And that was the last time they took me fishing.

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