Wade in The Shade Cont. have had this bucket list item about going trout fishing in the White River in Northwest Arkansas for quite some time now and here lately it’s been really tugging on me to get up there and get a line wet. Wyatt and I usually make a trip to the Guadalupe below the Canyon Lake Dam every Spring to do a little trout fishing,
but this year we just haven’t made it yet and probably will not get there. The Guadalupe River is the only river in Texas that stays cold enough year round for the trout to survive and reproduce. In addition to the natural additions, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Service stocks the river with thousands of fingerling trout
Sunday observations
Amidst all of the Covid19 craziness, we all seek our normal. That has been a hard thing to find for all of us. My house included. Combine it with flooding repairs, and craziness, and you find yourself asking............ what is normal? Do we even know anymore? My house was spared flooding damage internally. God knew what he was doing when he placed my home 5” higher than my brother that lives next door. Because that 5” difference, provided myself,
my dog, my cat, my brother, my sister in law, and their tiny tot dog Didi, a safe refuge during the complete remodel of my brothers home. They had 5’ INSIDE. Not as bad as many, but if you have had water, you know any amount.... its not good. Let me explain, though. I am not in a two story massive home. I am in an 18x80 2 bedroom mobile home. Big bed rooms, so that helps, but we just combined, and moved, and shoved.......and made it work. They were with
4 • Neighborhood Net • May 19, 2020
VOL 20 • ISSUE 20
every January. We have caught some pretty nice fish out of that little stretch of water over the years, but I’m told that there is nothing like trout fishing in the White River. I’m going to find out before 2020 is over and I’ll tell you folks all about it whenever I get back. The problem that I’m having now is the same prob-
lem that I always have.....time. It’s a nine hour trip each way and so that pretty much takes up a day of travel each way and then that’s a long way to go to only fish one day, so it’s most likely a four day minimum trip. Who has four days in a row to give up when you’re in the newspaper business???? However, with this current
pandemic going on right now, it’s not like I have to show up in person for any meetings, so I’ve got a window. With a laptop and a cell phone for internet connection, I can pretty much attend a meeting in Huntsville Texas from a truck stop parking lot in Little Rock, Arkansas. So, I have a plan.....I just need to get reservations
for a place to sleep at night and I’m going fishing. Remember to check on your buddy’s and bring your light tackle..... those trout are pretty good fighters. Till next time, I’m.........Wade in the Shade
me for a few weeks immediately following Imelda, then back home until January 9. They moved out yesterday. For four months we have made it work. We get to rocking with renovations, then God decided we needed a pandemic. My sis in law is a teacher, so she has worked from home since I dont know when. Bless her heart because she has had no “out” to speak of. My brother and I both have essential jobs, we have worked every day and for that we are blessed.
We did not have the added stress of lost incomes, as I am pretty sure we would have all totally lost our minds at that point. I wont say we have handled every single aspect right. Many may have wondered why we possible acted differently, because we have been hyper vigilant about this virus. Honestly, none of us cared. Because as a side note, our Mom no longer has a vehicle (thanks Imelda). WE are who makes sure Mom has groceries, a random outing, and some
sanity during this crazy stuff.....had one of us gone down with Covid, the entire house was going under quarantine. We weren’t vocalizing our concern, nor discussing it because IT WAS NOT AN OPTION. So we may have seemed snappy, we may seem overly cautious, we may have seemed not quite ourselves. Because we weren’t. I won’t apologize for surviving. Nor should anyone else. You do the best you can, and move on. As I type this
it sounds ridiculous but we did a post flood, combined homes, renovations, social distancing, Covid concerns, co-habitating of 2 houses......3 adults........and did I mention a long distance wedding attempting to be planned as well? But.... we made it. Happy Mother’s Day peeps, as you celebrate today, celebrate yourself. We are all surviving our own level of craziness every day..... and survival on any level, is worth celebrating.
www.TheNeighborhoodNet.com
Okay.....so I have pushed this week’s column about as far as I can push
to what I need to write about. This Corona Virus thing is starting to make
because I just realized that I’m not running around the country side going
it....it’s now 10:00 pm. on the Monday night before we go to press Tuesday morning and I still have no clue as
things difficult.....I don’t do anything except sit in front of a computer and attend zoom meetings. It’s kinda nice
from one meeting to the next, but I’m starting to miss that personal interaction that you get from person to
E E R F person meetings. I called to check on a friend of mine who was having a little trouble when I visited with him last week and things were not much better. He had told me last week that he couldn’t see any bright spots in his life and that everything that he touched turned into another problem. I don’t think that
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he would do anything stupid, but I just felt the need to check on him and see how things were going. Sure enough, it hadn’t gotten much better, but he was able to bend my ear and I just listened to all of the things wrong in his life. We probably talked for an hour with him doing about 55 minutes of that and
I think when we were done that he had gotten a lot of his issues off of his chest and I believe that he felt better. I offered a few words of encouragement and by the end of the conversation we were off of his problems and talking about fishing. Fishing..... yea, that’s what I’m talking about. I (Cont. on page 4)
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2 • Neighborhood Net • May 19, 2020
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Memories of outdoor adventures and misadventures could fill a book. I hope you are banking a treasury of them to savor at family get togethers. They’re priceless. A favorite happened to us on one of those precious Indian summer days in early December that make us so glad we live in Texas -- clear, cool, calm, sunny and demanding that we spend it outdoors. I was even in a short-sleeved shirt. We had put in that Sunday afternoon after church at the Sandy Creek Park boat ramp near Jonestown on Lake Travis
and fished upstream toward Jonestown. Our first Labrador accompanied us, having previously learned canoe ethics. Or so we thought. We had caught a couple of small bass and were at peace with the world as the shadows began lengthening. Closing out a perfect afternoon together on the lake, we reluctantly began paddling back to the boat ramp, plugging the shore along the way. I had used several lures and was ending the day with a Bill Lewis “Spit Fire,” a topwater lure that emits fish-attracting splashes as it’s retrieved. Vicky, in the bow with “Choco,” provided paddle-power. She knew I would dawdle to extend a perfect
day as long as possible. The boat ramp was in sight. We were at the last point where a cove enters the lake and the No-Wake area around the boat ramp begins. I cocked my arm for my “first last cast.” All Choco saw was my right arm flinging forward as she had seen many times before, launching a stick or a tennis ball. Then she saw a projectile in the air, followed by a terrific splash right at the shore as the lure hit the water. What happened next occurred in less time than it’ll take you to read it. As I reacted to the vicious strike of a mature largemouth bass, Choco reacted as all Labradors woud when a retrieve is possible. With a lunge
that nearly capsized the canoe, she propelled airborne to the water in pursuit. Thrilled by hooking a big bass, I didn’t react to raise the rod tip to protect the line. Choco swam right into it. With the bass frantically pulling on one end and me on the other with Choco charging in the middle, the line snapped.
Instantly after realizing it, I turned the air obscenity- blue and appeared to be trying to whip a swimming Lab with a limber spinning rod. Only a short paddle to the ramp, I heatedly told her she could just swim home. As I looked up, only then saw a man sitting on the shore with his young daughter.
I embarrassingly apologized. An amused smile appeared as he nodded. There’re a moral or two to this. A frisky Lab in a canoe is always risky. The other is that having such words in your vocabulary is a really bad idea. You never know when the Devil is going to provide a perfect time for one to blurt out.
The point jutting out into Lake Travis near the center of this image was the site of this week’s saga. The offending Labrador got to swim the rest of the way to the shore in the foreground, probably thinking that was a treat for trying to retrieve something thrown for her pleasure. No animals were injured in this incident, although a good fishing lure was lost. Photo by John Jefferson. May 19, 2020 • Neighborhood Net • 3