Mackeral Fishing With Grampy

     In 1996 the kids and I came home to Lockeport from Tennessee and spent six weeks with Mom and Dad. We went to the beach just about every day and had picnics and bon fires on the rocks of Rood's Head. We ate fish that Mom fried in eggs and cracker crumbs and got filled up with all the good things that we couldn't eat or do in Tennessee. But the kids favourite activity was going fishing with Grampy.
     Almost every day Dad and the boys would get up and get ready to go mackeral fishing in Jordan Bay. The boys were 6 and 7 yrs old and loved going. They would help pull the boat on and off the truck and help launch it and even helped to clean the fish they caught. Our boys never cared about the height of their rubber boots in relation to the depth of the water. No, if Dad or Uncle Russ needed water to clean the fish with, Benjamin would just wade out, over his boot tops, and get a bucket of water. Matthew loved helping to clean the fish and found that if you squeezed the fish just right the blood and guts would run down your arm just right. Well the boys had fun that's for sure. And Dad is a most patient man.
      Mom and I were kept busy that summer with laundry and bathing kids every day. They would come home from fishing and we would strip them off on the back step and put the boys in the tub and the clothes in the washer. Even though Mom and Dad's well is not very deep, it never went dry.
     Alannah never went fishing because she was only 3 and being the child that she is, she never asked to go even though she wanted to badly. On one particular day, early in the morning she got out of bed and came downstairs. She stopped half way down and looked out the window by the staircase and said to Dad who was reading the newspaper in his chair at the foot of the stairs "Grampy today would be a good day for mack-ull fiss-in. Dad's heart melted and he said "would you like to go mackeral fishing with Grampy?" She readily said she would and got so excited!
     Mom and I dressed her in her little red rubber boots, red checked pants and a red t-shirt (a girl has to look good ha ha). She and Grampy got to go fishing alone. I took the boys to the beach and they had fun there but I think they would have rather been fishing. Alannah helped by passing the fish to Grampy that they had caught so he could clean them. When they came home she was tired but beaming from ear to ear. She had got to go fishing with Grampy! And yes, it WAS a good day for mack-ull fiss-in.