My father loved to fish. These primal roots were established in his youth where you needed to be able to hunt and gather for sustenance. While in Navy housing in Norfolk, we were surrounded by water from creeks, the smaller Willoughby Bay to the seemingly endless Chesapeake Bay. All were fair game for my father to set up shop with his two kids in tow.
We would cast our rods and crab traps off the concrete rip rap at the waters edge and sit in silence.
Sometimes my father would pay the pier fee and we would drive a few minutes to the rickety wooden Oceanview pier jutting out into the Chesapeake Bay. And we would get into the same hypnotic routine…… baiting our crab traps with chicken securing them with twine and heaving them over the pier and baiting our rods with whatever live bait we had and casting them out over the edge. Then we would wait…and wait…and wait…..pull up the traps hand over hand usually to find an empty trap with no bait inside because of my faulty knots. But every once in while, we would be rewarded with a few blue crabs.
Moving to Virginia Beach, the location was different but the routine the same. There were plenty of creeks and bays and the Virginia Beach Pier made a fine substitute. Any chance my father had, he was near the water and we were right there with him.
We took our last and really only vacation to the Blue Ridge Mountains. We had never really taken a family trip before and in retrospect I should have seen this as an ominous sign.
I remember our drive so clearly. The views were breathtaking ……endless mountains as far as you could see. However, you never felt far from death as only inches separated your car from the edge of the mountains.
We finally did get to our destination and just like before…..we fished.
Childhood lost 