Fishin' with grandpa...

As many of you know, my grandfather in southern Indiana has been having some medical difficulties over the past few weeks. I've been fortunate enough to get to spend some time with him in the hospital, which has led me to reminisce about various trips and things I've done with him in my lifetime. I've had the unusual experience of growing up with all four of my grandparents still living, so I've built up a wealth of stories with each of them. But the one that my grandfather most commonly recalls involves a certain fishing trip...

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, my grandfather decided to take me and my two older cousins on a fishing trip in northern Minnesota. The chance to take a vacation with my cousins was exciting enough, but I had never been on a trip alone with my papaw (what we Hoosiers call our grandfathers...) at the time, so it was a grand event for yours truly. Papaw drove my cousin Derek and I, while my cousin Boomer awaited our arrival in Minnesota. (The secondary purpose of the trip was to pick him up at summer camp.)

On the drive up, we stopped somewhere in Wisconsin and did the only thing that makes sense when you're in Wisconsin -- we bought cheese. I think my cousin and I bought about five pounds of cheese, because I can remember we ate string cheese almost continuously for the rest of the drive that day. My grandfather is a pediatrician, so he understood that eating several pounds of cheese will leave one in a world of hurt later on (actually, common sense would tell this to most people, physician or not) but obviously this escaped Derek and me. I can remember papaw laughing his head off at us later that night as we lay in intestinal distress.

Upon arriving in Minnesota, we headed for Boomer's summer camp. I can remember we wandered around the grounds for a while looking for any sign of my cousin. In the mean time, we were introduced to a guy standing waist deep in the lake. This particular introduction sticks with me, because I remember as my grandfather reached out to shake the guy's hand, he emerged from the lake naked. I wasn't accustomed (thankfully) to seeing naked adult men, let alone emerging from swampy lakes, so the scene of this dude rising out of the lake has stuck with me. It seemed odd to me at the time, and to be honest, it seems slightly odder to me now. So naked guy, I hope you realize the impression you left on me. Ick.

We stayed in a little motel in Ely, Minnesota, and the only restaurant nearby was an A&W. Every morning we'd hop out of bed to go for breakfast at the A&W. Actually, the cousins hopped out of bed, while papaw crawled. He slept with one of the three of us each night, and I snored, Boomer turned perpendicular in the bed, and Derek kicked, so I think he slept about six minutes each night. Breakfast was a highlight each day for the cousins. My grandfather may have been a doctor, but he never ate food that made any sense. He's fond of ice cream with sunflower seeds or potato chips on it, or ketchup on cottage cheese and such. So for breakfast at the A&W each day, he ate a salad with ranch dressing. I have no idea why. Similarly, in keeping with supporting healthy eating habits for his grandsons, we ate coney dogs and root beer floats at 7 am each morning. We thought it was the greatest thing ever, but I have a feeling papaw probably realized his mistake each evening as we drew the windows and doors of the small motel room closed. I think the only time he ever gave the A&W employees any indication of his profession was when he'd say things like, "No, no Bret David. You can't order a second coney dog for breakfast," as though that second coney dog was where the pediatric line of good judgment was crossed.

Our experiences fishing on the lake were less than productive. We spent a lot of time clanking around in the boat, and papaw spent most of his time fixing tangled reels. This led to a lot of ham fistedness on his part, which usually concluded with a rod and reel in the lake. We easily fished more rods out of the lake than we did blue gill or pike. The other thing all of the cousins remember is that papaw could never hear what any of us were saying. He's notoriously hard of hearing, and at one point, he hammered the boat into a rock at high speed. He scolded Derek, who had been assigned "rock watch" at the front of the boat, and Derek would have replied, had he not been hoarse from screaming "ROCK!" for the previous five minutes.

My other memories of that trip involved papaw and the car. If memory serves me, it was a blue Ford LTD. At one point, we were nearly demolished by a pickup truck that ran a stop sign in Virginia, Minnesota. I think it was the same day when we made a left turn onto a street, and Derek asked the seemingly innocent question, "Papaw, I've never seen a street where you look at the backs of the stoplights instead of the fronts." It quickly occurred to papaw that we were going the wrong way up a four lane divided highway. He was unfazed and quickly drove the LTD through a small patch of private property in an effort to join the proper lanes of traffic.

There were lots of other great memories on that trip, but the thing that will forever stick out in my mind is how much I enjoyed spending that time with my grandfather. I wouldn't trade it for anything, and if you haven't done something similar with your own kids or grandkids, I couldn't make a stronger recommendation. At 84 years old, papaw still lights up whenever we speak of that trip, and I do much the same.

(More pics of Grant will be here shortly!!)