Growing up, when my brother and I spent the weekend at my grandparents’ house, at least one morning started at dawn. My grandpa would take us out to the garden compost pile, and we’d sift through the topsoil for nightcrawlers, which we deposited into an old coffee tin. After we’d collected a respectable amount of worms, we would leave the tin on the front steps of the porch and head off to the local bakery for donuts. Thus, fortified by sugary treats—“chocolate jobbies,” as my grandpa termed them—we’d return for our can and fishing rods and set out to his favorite fishing spot, a little pond where the sunlight spilled thickly over the trees.
I wasn’t very good at fishing, but I had the nascent luck of someone who didn’t know enough to overthink things. My grandpa would hook my bait (I was squeamish.), I’d add my bobber and sinker, cast my line and when I reeled in a palm-sized sunnie or crappie, he’d be the one to pin down the spiny fins and set it loose again.
When I read Mollee Francisco’s story about Throw
