Boys Will Be…Here! – Part 2

 

This is the final installment of the adventures we had during Boys’ Week 2018.  In the first half I told you about the boys helping me with chores, swimming in the kiddie pool, roasting s’mores, taking a hay-less hay ride, visiting the Bootheel Youth Museum, and the Safari Park, among other things.

This week, I tell you why I bought my fishing license.

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The next day after our visit to Cape Girardeau we headed west to Rocky Falls.  It is the biggest and one of very few waterfalls in the area.  The little creek flows gently through the woods north of Winona, Missouri until it comes to the falls, where it tumbles down the rocks for a couple hundred feet, finally dropping into a pool roughly the size of a football field.  Although it gets deeper or shallower at times, while we were there this time the majority of it was shallow enough for we adults to walk around carrying a boy…up to neck deep on us.  Most of the time we shepherded Richard and John around in the shallows, where they chased tiny fish, crawdads, and one little turtle.

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On our way home we stopped at Cave Spring, a tiny cave carved out by a barely liquid spring.  The ladies enforced very relaxed rules for tourists, which made it quite user-friendly for a couple three-year-old boys who love to touch everything.  As the group safety officer and boy-herder I got to ride drag, keeping the boys moving forward and out of the frigid water beside the boardwalk.  It also meant I didn’t get to see the cave salamanders, cave crawfish, or most of the cave sites that the tour guide pointed out.

I’ve seen it all before and the boys loved it, so that’s all that mattered.  The guides were quite friendly and didn’t speak in that sing-songy voice that seems to be the rule for tour guides so it was a great experience.  We invested in some of the modestly priced items in the souvenir shop and sat out a thunderous rainstorm on top of the picnic tables under a sheltering roof so we had quite an adventure.  The guides are in it as much for educating the public and helping the planet as for making a buck so they encouraged our questions.  They also brought one of the newly hatched box turtles the women care for and let the boys hold it. They even gave each of the boys a geode and told us how to carefully break the rocks open to reveal the sparkly crystals inside.

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The week was nearing its end but we had one more thing on our “absolutely must-do” list. John had specifically asked me to take him fishing.  I knew that Richard’s other grandpa had taken him before but neither boy had ever actually caught a fish so the self-imposed pressure on me mounted.

I wanted to help both boys catch their first fish.

Hear the musical emphasis?  “Dun dun DU-U-UN!”

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Annie and Amanda took all the responsibility on themselves for keeping our pintsized fishermen from becoming bait.  This freed me up to wield the boys’ little poles and call them over every time I thought I felt a nibble.

Hey, I said I wanted to HELP the boys catch their first fish; I didn’t say they had to do anything more than TOUCH the slimy floppers for me to call it a win.  As you can see in the video, my assistance was prodigious, but the boys did take part, if you define “take part” loosely.  Very loosely.

I felt a jerk on John’s line and called him over help.  His excitement made my day and he did touch the gasping bluegill long enough for me to count it.  As Annie videoed the moment, John squeeled, “I catched a fish!  I catched a fish!”

I then had to explain to John that we needed to release the scaly critter since it was too small to keep and eat.  I think he wanted to keep it for a pet rather than eat it but he allowed me to let it go anyway.

After that excitement, the pressure doubled for me to help Richard land one.  Any grandpa worthy of the name knows that you never want to do for one what you can’t do for the other.  A few minutes later Richard quivered with excitement as he reeled in his first catch.  Of course, as Annie videoed the moment, you can hear John claim, “I already caught that fish.”  He hadn’t, but hey, they were both excited.

Who am I kidding; I was excited too.  I had helped two of my grandsons catch their first-ever fish on the same day.  Of course, they were the only two fish we caught on that trip, but it counts as a successful fishing trip in my book.  VERY successful.

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That afternoon, as Richard and Amanda napped, John and I battled through the weeds at the edge of the wheat field to check my game cameras.

Back home, I put the memory cards in my computer and we took a look.  All the bucks showed some growth.  The biggest one I’ve been watching had added about two inches of antler in only six days.  John and Richard were most excited though by a couple other pictures.  One showed a doe coming in to sample the bait.  Accompanying her was her little spotted newborn fawn.  The other showed a full grown raccoon.  He had discovered the bait and was paying nightly visits.  There were dozens of pictures of him but one especially showed him standing to look around.

I have to admit, he was beautiful, but my grandsons’ reaction to him was more precious to me.

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Annie took off to meet our inlaws in Kentucky and hand off Amanda and my little buddy, Richard.  Back home Travis and Danielle had arrived and had an appointment in Tennessee.  While they were gone I would watch John and six-year-old Emma.  It helped ease the pain of Richard and Amanda’s departure.

The brother and sister entertained me as we swam and blew bubbles.  When Annie, Travis, and Danielle got home we all visited Great Gran.  The kids played in the gathering darkness as the grownups helped or sat on the porch chatting.

We talked about Mom’s childhood and mine, that of Travis and Danielle, and our precious grandkids.  We talked of how things have changed over four generations and nearly 100 years…and how things have stayed the same.

Mom was born into a family with no TV or even a radio.  Our grandkids have never lived without a big screen TV and hundreds of channels.  Mom’s family sometimes didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, and the rest of us have never known hunger.  Diseases that killed some of Mom’s siblings in infancy can now be cared for with a quick trip to the doctor.

John and Emma laughed as they chased fireflies just like Mom and her brothers and sisters did nearly 100 years ago…and just like our ancestors did 100 years before that.  And all of us were born into families that loved us.

That’s what families are about.  Love.  Love is why it hurt so much to see the last of our visitors pull out of the driveway…and love is why we look forward to each and every time we see each other.

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Annie and I don’t have much time to feel sorry for ourselves because we have so much to look forward to.  We also can’t rest too much because we have to get ready.  In just a couple weeks, excitement will visit the Matthews farm once more.  In just a couple weeks comes…

Girls’ Week.

In a word, “Wow!”

 

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(below) A short video I made of Boys Week 2018.