Gone Fishing
part one
I hope you have a great weekend. On Saturday you have a chance to catch up with us on our plan to read through the Bible in a year. We are getting closer and closer to the half-way mark! Each Saturday I share a Saturday story, a tale from life which sometimes has a moral to the story and other times is just a story. Welcome to Saturday…
“Preacher, you need to go fishing with me this week.”
That was Harry’s approach. Blunt and to the point.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Well, Jessie won’t let me go by myself anymore. She says I’m too old to be going out on the lake in a boat by myself. I think she should mind her own business, but that’s the way it is. If you don’t go with me, I can’t go and the crappie should be biting good this week and I don’t want to miss it. So, you need to go fishing with me. What day do you want to go?”
Jessie was Harry’s wife. They had been married close to 60 years I think. Harry was pushing 90. Jessie was probably right about him not going fishing by himself. He was probably right about her minding her own business. But something had to give, so Harry did and I was his way of solving the problem. As his pastor I had a duty to look out for his welfare – and more importantly to this particular issue, I had the freedom to take some time during a week day to go fishing, especially if it could be attributed to pastoral care.
“Thursday. How about Thursday morning.”
“Fine. Meet me at my house around 7.”
Thursday morning rolled around and I got to Harry’s house around 6:45 because I don’t like being late and because I knew he would be ready to go. I was right. He had his boat trailer hitched to his truck and Lewis, his good friend and one of our elderly church deacons, was there as well. It was going to be a threesome.
Lewis and I got into the truck, I was squeezed into the middle of the seat between them, and off we went. When we got the boat ramp, Lewis and I got out and watched Harry back his V-bottom boat down the concrete ramp and into the lake. I held the rope tied to a large I-hook on the front of the old boat and Harry pulled the truck and trailer out was the boat floated free. I pulled the boat over to the adjoining boat dock and waited for Harry to part and make his way back down to the dock.
Once there, we all climbed in and pushed away from the dock. The boat started floating out away from the shore line and Harry sat down in the back and started pulling on the rope to get the small outboard motor running. This was a smallish boat, big enough for the three of us to fish from but that’s it.
It only took a couple of pulls and smoke rolled from the motor and Harry turned the handle to accelerate away from the shore and take us to where he said he knew we could catch some good crappie that day. But the funny thing was we didn’t move. The engine roared, but we just kept floating along.
After a few tries, Harry killed the motor and pushed down on it to raise the shaft out of the water so he could see what had gone wrong.
Once the tail end of the shaft cleared the water, we all saw what had gone wrong. The propeller was missing. When Harry backed the trailer down the ramp and into the lake he forgot to raise the motor and it had apparently hit on the concrete ramp, sheared the pin off, and when he started the motor the propeller went spinning to out to who knows where and eventually to the bottom of the lake, where I assume it still resides to this day.
By the time we figured out the problem, we had drifted a long way from the lake shore. There weren’t any other boats around. It was just the three of us drifting aimlessly out across the lake.
“Harry, do you have any oars,” I asked?
“No. You know I took those out of the boat the other day because I didn’t figure we needed them and with the three of us in here it would take up too much room.”
We sat in silence.
lol….oh no!