Why is it? Some days one just feel nostalgic and you have no idea where all that comes from. It can't be the slides I am scanning at the moment, unless one can get all fuzzy about a beaver dam on central Maryland's Eastern Shore. So it's unlikely that was the trigger. Perhaps the steaming cup of Pikes Place next to my key board. So what is it. The older I get the stranger my mind seems to get and the unexplainable become totally rational to me. Maybe no one else, but "I can see clearly now" to quote an old song. It's wonderful because I am reaching the age that people say "No wonder he behaves that way....look at how old he is"! Screw um!
Probably just an overactive imagination that conjures up 55 year plus memories of a life long gone. As kids we became water rats when school was out in June, took our shoes off until September when we had become crispy critters covered with bay mud and salt water. They say you can never go back. Whoever said that, has no soul. Of course you can go back, just don't try it physically.
There were four of us who hung together. Two natives of Rock Hall, Maryland, Paul and Sonny. I think Sonny's real name was Festus, but we never used it. Who in the world would name their kid Festus? These two guys were barely high school graduates and the salt of the earth. Sonny lived a hard life and has now passed on. I think Paul still hauls lumber on the Eastern Shore. Jim and myself made the final four. Both outlanders who either had to fight or hide behind Sonny and Paul for protection. You see new kids in town were not viewed as part of the plan until they were tested. Took us a couple of years, but we didn't care. Both Jim and I had little outboards and we four spent most of the time on the water. Fishing, crabbing, swimming, and water skiing.
Our biggest problem back then was raising enough money to keep the boat gassed up, go to the movies on Friday night, and fill up on cheeseburgers. It must have been bliss for our collective parents because most of the time we were not to be seen nor heard. Money was really not a problem. All we had to do was load the boat up with dip nets, bushell baskets and automobile tire inner tubes. Yeah, I'm that old. Tires had inner tubes! The basket would go inside the tire tubes and we would drag that around on a rope in the shallows of Eastern Neck Island looking for crabs. We would dip crabs for a half day and earn enough to invest in our other way of creating spending money. The crabs got sold and that staked us enough to play the pin ball machines in the restaurants. At that time in Maryland, they actually paid real cash for the games won. A nickel a game. We were good at it. Five dollars of crab money could easily turn into twenty in game winnings, and the week was made.
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