What some people will do for their brother-in-law

This is about the time of the year that I start searching the internet for prospective places to go fishing this coming year. One of my brothers-in- law and I like to go on a road trip and we have taken his son and son-in-law on them. It's one of those male bonding things where the old guys pass on collective wisdom to the young'ns. We also include a golf package with this so the young'ns are able to pass on their collective wisdom (get even) to the old'ns.

The trouble with these trips is all of us usually take along cell phones so we can keep in touch with our respective "Household-6s" (that's militaryese for our wives). In fact, we've even fallen into the bragging mode if a respective day of fishing was better for one of us than the others. And you know what -- cell phones now have the ability to take pictures and send them instantaneously to friends, family, CNN, America's Funniest Home Videos, etc. That leads me to the REAL story behind the picture.

It seems we rented a fishing boat at a place on Kentucky Lake. After paying for the gas, buying licenses, and paying deposits for various things including life jackets and oars (this is a key word), we set off to find Walter (Sorry -- momentary flashback to "On Golden Pond"). As is our custom, when we snag a lure on a log or something, we non-judgementally just maneuver the boat over to the spot so we can get the lure back. Well, it seems we were close to the shore on this one particular time and I picked up the oar to push us back out into the water. Unfortunately, the bottom was a bit muddy and the oar stuck there...but the boat was going out!

Well, there I was, both hands on the oar, both feet on the boat, and the boat moving ever-so-slowly out, and out, and ...you guessed it...out to the point of no return. All I could hear was my brother-in-law saying, "My deposit! My deposit!!"

Now, depending on whom you talk to in the boat, the details get fuzzy at this point. But rather than suffer the slings and arrows of abuse sure to accompany falling in the lake, but still trying to do the right thing, I decided to just jump in the lake. Of course all of this was caught on a cell phone camera. However, if you examine the picture carefully, you will see my shorts are wet from around the waist down. Had I fallen in, I most certainly would have been soaked and probably muddy. I rest my case. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot -- I seem to recall that year I caught the first fish ($1.00), most fish ($1.00) and biggest fish ($1.00). Shoot -- I probably could have bought that oar with my winnings.

This is certainly the stuff LEGENDS are made of, and I can hear those young'ns sitting around a campfire somewhere passing this story down to their children in years hence.

Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.

Hooah