Fishing with Grandpa

Guest post by Stephanie Wright

When my grandpa died, it was a somber occasion at first. The small, rural church congregation had known “Bud” for seventy-odd years. It didn’t take long before the ceremony got away from the new minister and degenerated into tall tales of fishing. I’d heard most of them a million times, but then the minister started to speak.

“When I first got here, Bud asked me when I wanted to go out on a boat fishing with him and I told him I don’t really fish. He told me, ‘Minister, you do now.’”

The minister said he and Bud went out early one morning and weren’t really catching anything, but then Bud got several crappie in a row. The minister had been up since about 4:00 in the morning. As 11:00 approached, he asked if they could go back to the car to get some breakfast.

Grandpa didn’t want to leave while they were biting, so he asked the minister if he’d like half a sandwich. My grandfather was an offshore tool-pusher for 40 years. He was used to a pretty rough-and-tumble way of doing things. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the sandwich, cut it with the knife he’d been cleaning fish with, pulled an oar out of the water and put half the sandwich on it so he could serve it to the minister on the other side of the boat.

God bless that man, he graciously ate the sandwich-but was never available to fish with Bud again.

Do you have a grandpa fishing story? We’d love to hear it!  Tell us in the Comment section below.